Reading FAT32 removable media (MO disk)

[stalesome]

Hi,

I have a need to read Magnetic optical (MO) disks formatted in FAT32 on my NT4.0 system. I downloaded and tried it a program from sysinternals called FAT32. It successfully read/wrote to a FAT32 formatted MO disk on my NT4.0 workstation (Compaq Deskpro EP550, Adaptec-2930 PCI SCSI card, Maxoptix t6-5200 MO drive, Sony 5.2BG MO disk formatted in FAT32) . I then installed the same MO drive on one of my servers (Compaq Proliant 1600 dual 400MHz processor, using internal SCSI connection), then installed FAT32. The server could happily read and, write and format disks in FAT16 and NTFS but when I tried to read a disk formatted in FAT32 I got an error message "the device cannot find the sector requested" if I keep on pressing retry I sometimes get a "The Parameter is incorrect" error message, If I press retry I get the original error message back. This is the same error message you would get if the FAT32 program is not installed and you tried to read a disk formatted in FAT32. I tried the MO drive on a different server (Compaq ML370 800MHz processor, connected to the internal SCSI bus) with the FAT32 program installed and it was able to read/write to the FAT32 formatted drive as expected. The first server I tried the MO drive and FAT32 program in is a test server so I did a fresh install of the operating system (NT4.0 with sp6a and FAT32), tried to read a disk formatted in FAT32 and go the same error. Again the server could read, write and format to NTFS and FAT16 but could not even read the FAT32 disk. I then tried to install the PCI SCSI card (with the same drivers), MO Drive and FAT32 program from my workstation onto a different NT4.0 workstation (Digital 3000 PC) and got the same error trying to read the FAT32 formatted disk. I then loaded a fresh installation of the OS on to a Compaq EN400 Deskpro and got the error again.

After this I got frustrated and formatted an old 2GB HDD in FAT32 from a win2000 system. I plugged it into the Deskpro EN400 as a secondary HDD. The workstation was able to read/write to the HDD straight away but when I stuck in the MO disk I got the same error. In disk administrator the MO disk formatted in FAT32 looked like it had 5 partitions 2 free space and 3 unknown format even though the disk is formatted as 1 partition in FAT32.

So far the only workstations/servers I have been able to get to read the MO disk formatted in FAT32 are my workstation and a production server. All of the servers/workstations have Sp6a installed. If the same PCI SCSI card was used the same driver was used. The only difference I can find is the older workstations/servers don't work and the newer ones do, but as far as I can tell this is a Software/driver issue not hardware so that should not make a difference.

Notes and things to know:

On the workstations/server with the error I can still read, write and format the MO disks in NTFS or FAT16.

All of the workstations/servers have the same Service pack.

I have tried fresh install if the operating system.

I have loaded new ASPI32 drivers to be sure.

I have used the same drivers / SCSI card on the working and not working workstations.

I have tried to reload the FAT32 program.

I have checked to make sure that the device is started "FAT32" under control-panel -> devices

Any help you can give me on this issue is greatly appreciated.

[Skyfrog]

I'm afraid I don't know why some of them work and others don't; perhaps it's a BIOS issue with the older servers or something like that. Anyway if it were me I would seriously consider upgrading to Windows 2000. If that's not possible I would at least reformat the MO disks using FAT16. I'd be too afraid of risking data loss trying to use FAT32 disks with Windows NT.