Hard Disk Crashes

[ronin_22]

Ok, Is it me or anyone else thinks thats creating movies
on your computer causes Hard Disk crashes. I create on an
average 2 movies a week and have had 2 crashes in the last
1 year :(
This one is very painful as my primary disk crashed. I am desperate and any suggestions will be welcome. I am running WIN2K with Fat32
and when I boot using a DOS disk and try to get directory it shows all wierd charaters on one partition while the other partition
looks fine!
Thanks

[MvB]

Had such problemes too.
Looks like your FAT or partition table is broken.
I recommend using NTFS. W2k with fat32 ist not a good choice.

[rjgn]

Win2k with fat32!

No no no :) Use NTFS.

[ronin_22]

Thanks guys I get the idea. I will use NTFS now on. I promise.

But what is the way out from here.
MvB : how do i repair the FAT or Partition table?

Also someone suggested that I might have a virus that knocked
off my boot record. How can I check for that? How Can I run a Anti Virus program from without bringing up my system.

[jggimi]

Most anti-virus software sold these days has the ability to create an emergency boot diskette. Since you didn't have that set up for your PC in advance, you're too late for that sort of service.

However, you may be able to use anti-virus software to analyze the drive if you install the drive into a second PC, and boot from that PC's primary drive.

[ppera2]

It can be due to virus of course, but can be because of weak power supply, low quality MB etc.

Anyway, creating movies (how long are those movies, what you create, btw. ?) is very demanding for hard drives, because of lot of head movement.
I recommend to you that forget all about OS, FAT or NTFS etc. It's all irrelevant - when hardware crash comes, nothing will prevent errors. Best what you can do is to buy second drive, and work by following simple system: source on one physical drive and target on another. It will result in much less head movement and higher speed.

Good thing in that case is also to put Win Swap file on second drive, because of similar reasons...