Hacking Windows detects errors on Wii HDD -- what if I allow it to 'fix&#3

[galneon]

Whenever I plug my Wii HDD into my PC, Windows 7 claims there are disk errors and asks if I want to scan and potentially correct them. This is nothing new--pretty sure it's happened with every one of my FAT32 Wii hdds over the years. There's certainly nothing wrong with the drives (no bad sectors), and I assume it's the nature of having a harddrive set up for the Wii and not for Windows. The 'corruption' is probably no problem for the Wii to read as the files are only corrupt relative to standard FAT32 specifications.

I'm just curious, really... Will allowing Windows to 'fix' the disk errors make it less compatible or render some files unreadable by my Wii? I'm sure someone's tried it.

 

[mauifrog]

You can let it scan/fix it. I doubt it will fix anything. I think it just detects the hdd being improperly unmounted, just killing the power, pulling the plug, etc.

 

[Anon10W1z]

Should be fine.

 

[galneon]

Ahh bet you're right... Windows has probably flagged the disk as dirty due to hot-swapping USB cables while the enclosure is powered on.

 

[Shano56]

Ahh bet you're right... Windows has probably flagged the disk as dirty due to hot-swapping USB cables while the enclosure is powered on.

yep. either click "fix" if you find the alert annoying or ignore it if you dont care

 

[DeadlyFoez]

From my understanding is that wii homebrew apps that write to the fat32 partitions do not write the changes to both of the file allocation tables, and Windows is seeing that both sets of FATs do no have the same info in them so windows thinks that there is a corruption. Now with that, if you decide to let Windows fix it then it may actually mess up some of your data. You are better off not to let windows fix it.

giantpune kinda went into better detail about this in the past, but I'm not about to search like crazy trying to find it.

 

[tueidj]

Windows doesn't deem inconsistent FATs to be an error, it will silently copy the first FAT over the second and say it found nothing wrong.

 

[PsyBlade]

Ahh bet you're right... Windows has probably flagged the disk as dirty due to hot-swapping USB cables while the enclosure is powered on.

Afaik FAT does not store mount status. That means that there is a real problem.
I would fix it. If you don't trust the tool included in Windows then use a different one (look for youself, I only use dosfsck).

Even if it is not reported by windows the diverging fat tables are well worth fixing too.
The greater the difference grows over time the greater the damage will be should something use the second fat.

 

[tueidj]

Windows does store the mount status in the partition if the drive is configured for write-caching (removable drives do not have it turned on by default).

 

[Cyan]

From my understanding is that wii homebrew apps that write to the fat32 partitions do not write the changes to both of the file allocation tables, and Windows is seeing that both sets of FATs do no have the same info in them so windows thinks that there is a corruption. Now with that, if you decide to let Windows fix it then it may actually mess up some of your data. You are better off not to let windows fix it.

giantpune kinda went into better detail about this in the past, but I'm not about to search like crazy trying to find it.

It was/is true for old homebrew using the old FAT library.
Dimok fixed it, and added a Resynch feature inside USBLoaderGX.
The resynch should be used when your drive is slow to calculate the free space left in the loader, that's how you know that your drive's Allocation Table are de-synchronized.

I don't know if Windows fix it or mess it.

 

[tueidj]

No, the free space count is stored in the FSINFO sector. The inconsistent FAT issue has not been fixed.

 

[Cyan]

oh, ok. I thought it was.
At least, using the resynch feature will fix the FSINFO sector that old compiled homebrew are still not writing correctly.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

Thanks tueidj for your input.

Now, I ALWAYS "safely remove my harddrive" and all other crap that I'm a person is supposed to do, but the next time I plug it back into my pc I get that it needs to be checked again, but only if I had done some type of data change on the harddrive via the wii... which is usually just downloading covers. So, whats causing it then and how can it be prevented from ever happening?

Of course, I only have this issue on Windows 7, I've never had this issue on XP... but then again, the last time I used XP there were still WBFS partitions that were the only option.

 

[galneon]

Ran chkdsk on it rather than let Windows do so automatically so that I could see what the problem was under the hood... Size mismatch with one of the truncated DVD9 WBFS files (Sakura Wars...wbf1). I deleted the game from the disk and will re-rip it later. Strange as I've had no problem with other DVD9 games. I've had this game on my HDDs for a couple years which explains why I've had errors detected upon mount for so long.

 

[Anon10W1z]

Thanks tueidj for your input.

Now, I ALWAYS "safely remove my harddrive" and all other crap that I'm a person is supposed to do, but the next time I plug it back into my pc I get that it needs to be checked again, but only if I had done some type of data change on the harddrive via the wii... which is usually just downloading covers. So, whats causing it then and how can it be prevented from ever happening?

Of course, I only have this issue on Windows 7, I've never had this issue on XP... but then again, the last time I used XP there were still WBFS partitions that were the only option.

Windows is the only "authorized" thing to write onto the drive. When something other than Windows writes to the drive, Windows thinks something is wrong.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

That warning doesn't mean much, I have a HDD and a flash drive that will always display the warning when I insert them, yet ScanDisk can't find anything wrong with them.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

I tend to find that when I let windows fix things it screws up my data, like my USB boot drive that I use for pc tech work.