Occasionally scanning floppy diskettes is a
good way to ensure data integrity and increase the lifespan of your diskettes. Diskette
scanning checks several things:
- Makes sure that both copies of the File Allocation Table (FAT) are the same (if they are
different, this can indicate physical problems with the diskette)
- Makes sure that all the files/folders listed in the FATs actually point to a file/folder
on the diskette (AKA lost clusters)
- Does a physical check of the diskette to make sure that all sectors on the diskette can
be written to and read from (it will mark any bad sectors for future reference so that
they are not used to store data)
Scanning and repairing floppy disks
- Startup a University Computing Lab NT workstation
- Put your floppy diskette in the disk drive
- Double-click on the My Computer icon located on the desktop of the
system
- Use the right-mouse button to Right-Click on the Drive Icon labeled 3
1/2 Floppy (A:)
- A pop-up menu will appear. Drag down to the Properties option
- Click on the Tools menu tab
- In the Error-checking field, click on the icon labeled Check
Now
Disk-scanning options
Two options are presented when you attempt to scan/repair/check a floppy disk.
- Automatically fix file system errors: In this mode, the computer will
not prompt you with the errors it encounters and will attempt to fix any errors it
encounters. This is a good option for routine maintenance. If you have encountered actual
errors with the disk, you might want to leave this unchecked so that you will see what is
wrong with it.
- Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors: In this mode, the
computer will check the diskette for physical errors, scan every cluster on the diskette,
and test for read/write errors.
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