Windows 98: "Lost file fragments" whenever Scandisk is run

Almost every time I run Scandisk (at least once a week), it finds two problems: lost file fragments and "wrong information which incorrectly identifies hard disk space ". The lost file fragments can be anywhere from a few Kb to a few Mb in size. In another thread here, it was suggested that it might be from damaged FAT files, but Scandisk finds nothing wrong with them.

The computer has been running pretty well with only a couple of minor problems, but this obviously isn't normal so I'd like correct it if I can. Anyone here have any suggestions? Thanks.

--Win 98 SE with all the critical updates, 40 Gb HD (two 19 GB partitions)...

 

The following explains where Lost File Fragments come from. These will also cause the free space to be wrong and need to be corrected.


When a program is running that is in the process of either creating a new file, or updating an existing one, the changes are obviously being written to an area on your disk (clusters). BUT, those clusters do not get actually assigned to a particular file name until that program closes the file.

Windows keeps track of all clusters, as to whether or not they are in use, and if in use, which file they belong to. (FAT table and disk directory)

When an application is terminated (ctl-alt-del), or it fails on an error or you reboot your PC while that program is running, the clusters continue to be "in use" (in the FAT) and continue to be "not assigned" (not referenced from the disk directory).

When Scandisk runs, it finds these "lost file fragments" and either creates CHK files or deletes them, depending on the option. In general, you can delete the files after they are created. The only time you would want to attempt recovery, is in the event that the file being edited or created, was extremely important and needed to be recovered.

But, having said this, you still need to be careful. There can be situations on a failing drive where the FAT/directory is damaged, and scandisk "thinks" that a lot of your disk is comprised of lost file fragments. In this case you do not want to convert them to files, and you definitely don't want to delete them.

So, if you have just gone through a bad shutdown, or had programs fall over on you, then you can expect to have scandisk find some fragments when it runs. But, it it ever finds "a lot ", be suspicious.

This is one reason why you do want to be careful running scandisk with autofix selected. You always want to review the errors found first, and then decide if you really want scandisk to try and fix them.

 

Thanks, WhitPhil. I had read that in another thread before I started this one. It was the part about "if it ever finds a lot, be suspicious" that prompted this thread. This morning, it found 4.2 Mb of lost file fragmenst, only a few days after the last scan.

However, if lost file fragments are just "orphaned data" so to speak and not actual system or program files, I suppose it's nothing to worry about. Is it?

 

Thanks, WhitPhil. I had read that in another thread before I started this one. It was the part about "if it ever finds a lot, be suspicious" that prompted this thread. This morning, it found 4.2 Mb of lost file fragmenst, only a few days after the last scan.

However, if lost file fragments are just "orphaned data" so to speak and not actual system or program files, I suppose it's nothing to worry about. Is it?

 

My term "a lot" meant "many" lost file fragments of any size, as opposed to a few that were large.

If scandisk happens to "think" that the entire drive is comprised of "lost file fragments ", then there will be "many" found, and you do not want to do anything with them. Just call a Data Recovery Specialist.

But a few, of any size, after you know that you had programs fail, you ctl-alt-del'ed and did end tasks or you did a hard reboot, would certainly be considered normal.

Now, if you are doing none of that, and everytime you run scandisk it is finding lost fragments, something is strange.

I would save the resulting files (they become FILEnnnn.chk files in the root), and then use NotePad to open them, and see if you can detect any data there that would help you identify what program it belongs to.

 

Four files were complete gibberish (encrypted maybe ?) including the two largest files.

The non-gibberish part of two file fragmentss gave copyright info on two different files: "SensApi.dll" and "SensCfg.dll ", copyrighted to MS Windows 2000 (??-- I have 98--??). Another file was HTML code for a site dealing with rock bands (my son would have gone to that).

And one appeared to be a list of websites visited on a particular session.

There are four users on this computer so I guess there are bound to be freezeups and crashes. The .chk files don't seem to be critical, so I suppose there's nothing really wrong and I'll continue as I have been.

Thanks WhitPhil. And thanks for the info on retrieving and reading those files. I wondered where they were.

(also...I don't know how one of my posts appeared twice??)