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harddrive issues

C

coolVariable

Diamond Member
All files folders and subfolders of one of my folders on a NTFS harddrive have disappeared - without me deleting them!

Strangely though they apparently are still somewhere on the disk ...
When I click on properties for the drive it shows 70GB used - when I select all files and folders on the drive and click properties it shows only 47GB of files.
The folder whose contents disappeared shows up as having 0bytes in it.

How can I get the files and subfolders of that folder back?
Everything else on the drive seems fine.
 
I am not sure what the problem is and the folder stating 0bytes leads me to believe it is not a folder, View, Options setting misconfiguration. It may help to use a bootable Rescue Disk to use another operating system environment to read your files and copy them to a different folder. If the Rescue Disk fails, it may help to then use a data recovery program.

[*]Rescue Disks[*]Data Recovery Programs
 
It seems the disk drive has experienced some corruption of some kind, which may only be a filesystem level corruption.

It may help to try the following:
  1. run some Windows level commands such as CHKDSK, CHKNTFS, RECOVER, or "SCANDISK C: /AUTOFIX /SURFACE",
  2. partition Table Doctor to attempt to rebuild the partition table, or
  3. one of the data recovery programs to attempt to copy your lost data to another section of the disk drive or to another disk drive.

It seems the drive is failing and should be tested with the drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility. Also, it may be a memory issue and it could be a good idea to test the memory with memtest.

[*]Memory Tests
[*]Hard Drive Related Products
[*]Hard Drive Manufacturer Diagnostic Utilities

[*]OEM Support Sites
 
Originally posted by: birdpup
It seems the disk drive has experienced some corruption of some kind, which may only be a filesystem level corruption.

It may help to try the following:
  1. run some Windows level commands such as CHKDSK, CHKNTFS, RECOVER, or "SCANDISK C: /AUTOFIX /SURFACE",
  2. partition Table Doctor to attempt to rebuild the partition table, or
  3. one of the data recovery programs to attempt to copy your lost data to another section of the disk drive or to another disk drive.

It seems the drive is failing and should be tested with the drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility. Also, it may be a memory issue and it could be a good idea to test the memory with memtest.

[*]Memory Tests
[*]Hard Drive Related Products
[*]Hard Drive Manufacturer Diagnostic Utilities

[*]OEM Support Sites
Click to expand...

woot!

Your post has just saved my ass! Figuratively of course. 😀

Shutdown earlier today, got home, fired up my system, and it was booting horribly slow. After ages of waiting I went to open a link to a directory and got an error message "....network resource unavailable...", scratched my head, opened Windows help. From there I stumbled into Diskpart and after playing aound with those commands a bit found that the Partition in question was "Offline"?? Couldn't figure out how to make it "Online", thouhg there's a command to do so, came straight here, saw this thread, your post, CHKDSK(been so long since I used that! 😀), message saying I didn't use F option, used that, and voila!!

Sorry for the meanderings, but the relief of getting this worked out is euphoric! 😉

Thanks! 🙂
 
Originally posted by: birdpup
It seems the disk drive has experienced some corruption of some kind, which may only be a filesystem level corruption.

It may help to try the following:
  1. run some Windows level commands such as CHKDSK, CHKNTFS, RECOVER, or "SCANDISK C: /AUTOFIX /SURFACE",
  2. partition Table Doctor to attempt to rebuild the partition table, or
  3. one of the data recovery programs to attempt to copy your lost data to another section of the disk drive or to another disk drive.

It seems the drive is failing and should be tested with the drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility. Also, it may be a memory issue and it could be a good idea to test the memory with memtest.

[*]Memory Tests
[*]Hard Drive Related Products
[*]Hard Drive Manufacturer Diagnostic Utilities

[*]OEM Support Sites
Click to expand...



You are the man.
Thank you sooooo much!
You saved my ass.
I ran chkdsk with option /f and it fixed my problem!

And I assumed the "scan disk" option under drive properties replaced all the old disk utilities!


Now off to check the drive for errors - I believe Maxtor has a program for that.
 
Originally posted by: sandorski
Hehe, we had he same issue at the same time, same fix, and using Maxtors! Weird and dopplegangerish.
Click to expand...

It seems so - but I ran the maxtor diagnistic utility and my disk seems to be broken.
I got an error code and was told to contact maxtor.

Problem #1: Where to move all my files
Problem #2: How to read the !#@$!@#$ error code when the harddrive is in my server and I do not have any monitors?!?! The regular text was hard enough to read on the TV but the !@#$!@#$!@#%$@#$% error code is fvcking impossible.
 
Originally posted by: coolVariable
You are the man.
Thank you sooooo much!
You saved my ass.
I ran chkdsk with option /f and it fixed my problem!

And I assumed the "scan disk" option under drive properties replaced all the old disk utilities!
Click to expand...

While I am very happy to hear of the success, I am not able to take all credit. I have compiled numerous items I have been able to find in this forum in the past few months but that means much of that information has been introduced by others. One person I can immediately think of is FlyingPenguin.

It is always good to hear of a success and this thread brought two such successes. 🙂

For the Maxtor drive with errors, the "advanced" RMA process should provide for Maxtor to send a good drive, which will allow you to copy your files to the good drive before shipping the failing drive. Just make sure to disconnect the failing drive or just keep the computer shut off until the new replacement drive arrives. This will prevent further damage from further use.
 
Originally posted by: tyborg
I thought checkdisk truncates files, which is a no-no when trying to recover files?
Click to expand...


Could be right (that's the reason why I was hesitant to run any scandsk/chkdisk utility).






BTW I ran the Maxtor test and it says the harddisk is failing.
Now I am on hold with Dell (who's utility gave me an error code 7)

... and they are sending someone to swap out the HD.



Edit: Honestly, I don't understand why Dell costumer service is so incompetent. First they wasted money be taking an hour to confirm something that I knew from the beginning, second they are now sending a technician to replace the harddrive - while they could save all that money and just Fedex the new HD and have me send in the old one.

 
Yep. Already moving all of my data of (except for 3 or so files that can no longer be accessed and seem to be corrupted).
It's a good chance to reinstall windows too.

Now if only the stupid tech came by to give me the new HD.




.... I wonder if I should take out the second HD I added to the system, so he doesn't give me crap about opening it up. Probably a good idea.
 
My never ending odyssee ...

Update 10/25/2005:

After 4 days I called Dell. They assured me the tech guy would come by on Friday of this week. I am highly sceptical that this is true - we will see.

Suspicious I ran the Dell diagnostics on me main system (a Dell x300) and guess what? ......... another harddrive failure! This blows! What is it with harddrives failing? It didn't used to be this bad, did it? In my old laptop I used the same harddrive for 6 years ... and still use it as an external drive.
So: Back on the phone with Dell. First I was hopeful that the tech would repair both at the same time ... of course they do not do that (idiots).
Now I have to send it in for repair ... pickup is scheduled for tomorrow (I need some time to back up all the stuff from this laptop [which also holds a lot of data from my desktop] to ANOTHER computer. Grrrrrr) I just hope I will have the laptop back by Nov. 07!!! I am going on a business trip and will absolutely need the drive to work! IF not ... well I will see if I buy a new laptop, use it for those 2 weeks and return it.
 
Any recommendations for a good delete program to overwrite the harddisks?

I wasn't so worried about the home desktop but my laptop has a lot of sensitive information on it that I want to be gone for good from that HD before sending it in.
 
If you have the Hard Drive MFG's programs, couldn't
you just use the setup one to format the hard drive & "write zeros" to it?
 
Originally posted by: coolVariable
Any recommendations for a good delete program to overwrite the harddisks?

I wasn't so worried about the home desktop but my laptop has a lot of sensitive information on it that I want to be gone for good from that HD before sending it in.
Click to expand...

DBAN is very good to erase the contents of a hard drive
 
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