Question:

I have a 1GB FAT partition with a 12MB EA DATA. SF file. This seems extremely large to me. Is there something wrong with the partition and can I fix it?

Answer:

Yes. There is something wrong. As you probably know, on a FAT partition, OS/2 stores the EA data in the EA DATA. SF file. OS/2 stores an index to the EA data in an otherwise unused field of the directory entry. When creating a new EA, if there is no unused space in EA DATA. SF, OS/2 will append the EA data to end of EA DATA. SF. For unknown reasons, OS/2 sometimes gets confused about where EA DATA. SF ends and the new EA is stored far beyond the end of the existing EA data. The result is an EA DATA. SF file that is much larger than it needs to be.

To fix this problem you need to find the errant EA and move it elsewhere. If nothing else is corrupted, OS/2 will release the free space at the end of EA DATA. SF.

To find the errant EA, you can to use that SWISS-ARMY KNIFE of disk-tools, DFSee , and a couple of scripts. One DFSee command script and one REXX script.

• The DFSee script writes a listing of all the files and directories in the partition to the log file FindBigEAIndex.log. The log reports the index of the EA within EA DATA. SF for each file that has EA data.

  If you want to check a drive other than C:, edit the script to point to the FAT drive you want to check.

  Run the DFSee script as:

    DFSee -b run FindBigEAIndex.dfs # q
  

• The REXX script (provided here in a zipped file) reads the contents of the log file and lists the 10 largest EA index values. The REXX script was tested with DFSee version 6.08, so it might need minor updates if the list command format changes in future versions.

  Run the script as:

    FindBigEAIndex <FindBigEAIndex.log
  

  The output will look something like

  Top 10
    \0000063D.DIR\LTR\ has EA index 2144
    \000006BD.DIR\0110RP1.MMO has EA index 2143
    \00000405.DIR\TLIBWORK.TRK has EA index 2100
    \00000405.DIR\BITMAP.C has EA index 2099
    \000006BD.DIR\F0006TL2.DWP has EA index 2075
    \0000065D.DIR\TIFFSIZE.CMD has EA index 2074
    \000006BD.DIR\0005TL01.FAX has EA index 2058
    \0000053D.DIR\PWBED.EXE has EA index 2053
    \000006BD.DIR\0005MB02.FAX has EA index 2052
    \000006BD.DIR\0004RH01.FAX has EA index 2050
  

  The first item listed is probably the cause of the large EA DATA. SF file.

Unfortunately, the DFSee version 6.08 list command can not report the true pathnames. This may change in future versions. If you don't recognize the file, you may need to use the dir command to determine the full pathname. If there are only a few occurrences of the name this will not be much of a problem. Otherwise, you may want to use the output of the DFSee command:

  list -f

With DFSee version 6.08, the reported EA index value is not the true relative cluster number, so it is possible that the largest EA index value will not correspond to the largest EA cluster value. However, it usually will. A future version DFSee will probably support reporting the true relative cluster number, so this will become a non issue.

Once you have determined the full pathname use the EAUTIL commands:

  eautil pathname tmp.ea /s
  eautil pathname tmp.ea /j

  chkdsk /f

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