Situation:
You run Ghost to do either a partition or a disk clone, and you see the message, "(19330) CheckFatTable: Unknown fat_type" or "(15121) CheckFatTable: Unknown fat_type."

Solution:
This error is normally caused by one of three problems.

Drives attached to a RAID controller
Ghost does not support hardware level RAID. In many instances, Ghost can clone a drive attached to a RAID controller successfully, provided that the drive can be accessed when booted to a DOS prompt. However, there is no guarantee that Ghost can clone such a drive. See the document Ghost compatibility with RAID.

Unallocated space on the hard drive
If there is unallocated space on the hard drive, use FDISK to allocate the space to a partition and format the partition.

Invalid partition System ID
There are generally four common partition types. These types are FAT16, FAT32, FAT32x, and NTFS. If one of your partitions is designated as anything other than these four types, Ghost may produce this error. This seems to happen most often when NTFS partitions are incorrectly identified in the partition table.

Symantec provides a utility, UPDSYSID.EXE, which determines the partition type of each partition on the drive. It is available at: ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/products/ghost/utilities/.

CAUTION: The UPDSYSID.EXE utility program changes the partition System ID. The partition System ID is used by the operating system during the boot process. Do not use this utility without the express direction of a Ghost support technician. Improper use of this utility can result in loss of information on the drive that the utility is run on. Take care when using this utility.


Using UPDSYSID to see the partition System IDs

The system IDs for FAT and NTFS partition types include:
06 - FAT16
07 - NTFS
11 - FAT32
12 - FAT32x

If the system ID for any of the partitions is shown as something other than one of these, then the system ID is most likely the cause of the problem.

To see a listing of the partitions and their designated types, run UPDSYSID.EXE with the drive number as a parameter. For example, in the following DOS command, the drive number is 1.

UPDSYSID 1

In the resulting display, the SYS column shows the system ID.

Here is an example of what this command may show for the first physical hard drive:

 No Boot  Sys    First Sect   Num Sects
00  80    11    00000063      08401932
01  00    11    08402058      08401932
02  00    11    16804053      02939832

In this example, all partitions are of type 11, which is FAT32.


Using UPDSYSID to change a partition System ID

The command line for using UPDSYSID to change the system ID is:

updsysid <disk> /update <partition number> <current system ID> <new system ID>

<disk> = the drive number. (The first drive is drive 1, not 0)
<part number> = the number of the partition you want to change. (Under the NO column in the table above)
<current sys_id> = The existing System ID of that partition. (Under the SYS column in the table above)
<new sys_id> = The correct System ID for that partition type.

Say, for example, the display from running UPDSYSID is:

 No Boot  Sys    First Sect   Num Sects
00  80    01    00000063      08401932
01  00    11    08402058      08401932
02  00    11    16804053      02939832

If the first partition is FAT32, then this display shows that the system ID for that partition is incorrect. The system ID should be 11.

Use the following command line to change the system ID of the first partition from 01 to 11:

updsysid 1 /update 00 01 11

When you run this command line, UPDSYSID changes the system ID and then displays the following table:

 No Boot  Sys    First Sect   Num Sects
00  80    01    00000063      08401932
 00  80    11    00000063      08401932
01  00    11    08402058      08401932
02  00    11    16804053      02939832

The table shows one line for what the system ID was before the change and another line for what the system ID was after the change. The table does not show that the drive has a new partition.

Document ID: 1999010611123825
Last Modified: 05.01.2005
Date Created: 06.01.1999
Operating System(s): DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux, Novell NetWare
Product(s): Norton Ghost 2003, Symantec Ghost 7.5