harddrive bad or software problem? UPDATE: fixed

[Novgrod]

reformatted partition one of two, reinstalled XP today.

Partition 2 of 2, including "My Documents," including "all the papers i wrote through four years of college" (rest assured, there's a backup, but it's not perfectly recent) is a big fat "D:\ is not accessible; access denied." Further inspection: XP claims that the file is empty.

As you can imagine, this isn't the happiest of situations. I don't suppose anybody has any history with this problem, or could, oh I don't know, tell me if the harddrive is on the way out and the file is dead to the world?

thanks much for help.

 

[bcterps]

So XP is recognizing your partition? I don't remember the exact menu, I think it's Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Storage?

What does XP say about your 2nd partition? I had a similar problem once when I reformatted my system partition. I ended up having to use some disk recovery software to get the info onto another hard drive. If you have Partition Magic, I would suggest using that to see if it could repair the partition.

 

[Novgrod]

XP is recognizing the partition just fine, it's just the single file "My Documents" that isn't recognized. I've been through the options: previously D:\my documents pointed to c:\somethingerother, which ain't the case.

My best guess is that somehow permissions are screwy (and not the whole partition), and i understand (courtesy of a friend of mine who's much more fluent than am i) that linux can get around such concerns. Anyway, if anybody has any thoughts i'd love to hear them, and thanks again for assisting.

edit: looked in the utility you mentioned, and it says the partition is just peachy.

 

[Markfw]

Not sure, but if ermissions are a problem, that is why it may be misreporting file size as 0, since you are not allowed to view the file. I am not great at XP, but in 2000 I allways set it up as administrator, and setup the network as "allways assume this user has logged in", so all my 2000 machines own all the files as administrator. If you have administrator rights on the machine, change the persmissions to world read.

 

[EeyoreX]

If your partition is fine, and you can read/write from/to it without errors or problems it might be that your "My Documents" folder was encrypted? If so, and you didn't back up your encryption keys, I have no idea how to get back at your files, but if you search the forum there have been discussions about this before.

Good luck!

\Dan

 

[Novgrod]

Thanks again for the help; i'll tell everybody how it turns out.

Thinking about reformatting partition 1 again (heh what can it hurt?) if not, i'll get it recovered somehow.

 

[Novgrod]

Here's how it turned out: friend came over, worked his linux voodoo magic, sent the files hither and yon, sent them back, and I'm good to go (including a forty page masterpeice on the war with Tripoli 1801-1805).

So he's screwing around with the settings, and the problem was the "simple file sharing" box (folder options/view) which, well, gave me a bad time.

So from now on i'm going to have two harddrives, the second just to back up the first.

Anyway, thanks for the help all