> I have a severly damaged FAT32 filesystem (apparently something
> has written stuff to the bootsector and surrounding sectors). Is
> there any hope in fixing this? I guess there isn't a saved copy
> of the bootsector info anywhere (since that would be useful). Can
> you deduce that information from looking at other parts of the
> disk. How good are commercial rescue applications (like Norton
> Utilities or whatever they are called these days)?

If the 2nd FAT is complete (i.e. the damaged at the beginning of the drive
hasn't reached that far), the drive should be recoverable intact.  In terms
of the commercial software, I would recommend fixing the FAT tables manually
by copying the second FAT over the first FAT (Norton Utilities Diskedit was
great for this but I haven't tried it with FAT32).  Then zero out the boot
sector on the Windows partition (referred to as the MDR sometimes I think).
Norton Disk Doctor or equivelent can usually create a decent replacement for
the MDR after this.  If you run NDD without copying the 2nd FAT over the
1st, it may think some of the garbage in the first FAT is more relevant than
the good stuff in the second FAT and overwrite the known-good data in the
2nd with info from the first.

Hope this helps ;o)

Mike.