Problems with FAT32

[Mr Smiley <mr_smiley_home@yahoo.com>]

Hi all,

I have a Fortec Passion Plus satellite receiver that records to a 
external USB hard disk using the FAT32 file system.

It has a known problem of sometimes coming up with a 'Not FAT32' file 
system.

The solution is to connect the drive to a windows computer and 
create/copy or delete a file anywhere on the hard disk. This corrects 
the error and the Fortec then sees the hard disk as normal.

If I create/copy a file using windows, it works every time.

But if I create/ copy a file using Debian or any Linux dist, it doesn't 
work.

What could be the difference between what windows does and Linux does.

I'm all Linux here and have to go to a friends up the road to use a 
windows machine :-(

Many thanks to you all

Mr Smiley