(OT) Correcting VFAT problems from Linux

[Guilherme Soares Zahn <gzahn@cnen.gov.br>]

Hi there,

    I think this is 1/2 OT, but as I could think of nowhere else to
ask... ;-)

    I needed some tool to diagnose a VFAT (FAT32) partition from inside
Linux... The reason why I want to do so is that all the tools I've tried
to use from inside DOS/WIN refuse to run properly (it seems there's some
rather serious problem with my 4.3Gb Samsung UDMA2 IDE HD, and as far as
I can tell it seems to 'freeze' when trying to read some sector - at
least from DOS/WIN - generating 'stack overflow' messages)...

    Anyway, I sort of thought (wondered? hoped? dreamed?) that maybe if
the diagnostic tool was running from Linux it might be possible to
overcome this problem (maybe just a slight difference on the way Linux
accesses the HD, or some fine-tuning on hwclock's settings, could do the
trick)...

TIA,

    Guilherme Zahn