Ubuntu – How to repair a corrupted FAT32 file system

fat32fsck

I'm using the FAT32 file system for my pen drive. It frequently has file/data corruptions.

In Windows, I used the scan disk utility to fix the FAT32/NTFS file systems. How can I do this in Ubuntu?

Best Answer

Try typing the following command in the Linux terminal:

sudo dosfsck -w -r -l -a -v -t /dev/sdc1

sdc1 is usually your pen drive. You can find your pen drive by typing mount in terminal. It's somewhere inside. If that command takes too much time for you, avoid -t switch.

  • -w means write to disk immediately.
  • -r means to do disk check interactively (ask you what to do to when encountering errors). On newer versions of dosfsck this is the default.
  • -l means to list the filenames processed.
  • -a means automatically fix errors. Do not use it, if You want to have more control over fixing possible errors.
  • -v means verbose mode. Generates slightly more output.
  • -t means mark unreadable clusters as bad.

If you want to be sure not to lose your data, create a backup of the source device first.

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