[RESOLVED] Cannot see any files on HDD?!

amy_damnit

I hope it is okay to post this here?!

Last night one of my data drives - over 500 GB of music - stopped being recognized in Windows Explorer?!

(The problematic computer is an old bucket-of-bolts running Windows XP box - that is on it's last leg - and am trying to nurse it for a little while longer until I can afford to buy a new computer.)

I went into DOS and typed this and got the following...

C:\Documents and Settings\user1>e:
The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.

However, when I go into XP's Computer Management, I see:

( E: )
465.75 GB
Healthy
[/quote]
Sometimes my drive trays act up and are the issue, but when I took out this data drive and put it into my external Icy Dock bay, the same issue is happening?!

The drive appears to be running and does not make any noises, so I am hoping that this is just an issue with Windows XP being corrupt versus all of my data going "poof"?!

Oh, I also ran Error-Checking under System Tools but this didn't help either.

Your help would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!

Sincerely,

Amy

mpb001

You have tried running

chkdsk e: /r

at the command line?

Also keeping fingers crossed helps.

amy_damnit

mpb001;10922071 wrote:
You have tried running

chkdsk e: /r

at the command line?

Also keeping fingers crossed helps.

I ran scan/check disk from within Control Panel, Admin Tools, Computer Manager Mgt which I think is the same thing.

From what I have read online, that is a bad idea to do that or the command you mention as it may trash the Master Boot File (MBF) even more.

Amy

mpb001

Is it supposed to be bootable( MBR )? If so that does change things.

You can probably run it with no flags( no /r ) as it shoudldn't touch the disk as it is read only mode. Never used the gui stuff and it probably hides stuff.

At least it will give you a report which should be more informative( tell you files are their and there number etc. )

C:\>chkdsk e:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is New Volume.

WARNING!  F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
Index verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
Security descriptor verification completed.

 220652774 KB total disk space.
  57206044 KB in 79665 files.
     32388 KB in 6036 indexes.
         0 KB in bad sectors.
    158446 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
 163255896 KB available on disk.

  4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
  55163193 total allocation units on disk.
  40813974 allocation units available on disk.

Exact same problem you have
http://icrontic.com/forum/showthread.php?t=71326

And here
http://archive.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=8&t=15700

Might work...
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard

Whatever you choose to do will it will seem daunting as there are no guarantees. But the only chkdsk I have known to really misbehave was the pre NT pure DOS one.

amy_damnit

mpb001;10922071 wrote:
You have tried running

chkdsk e: /r

at the command line?

Also keeping fingers crossed helps.

Yah, when I tried that it failed and gave me some message similar to "The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable."

Amy

amy_damnit

Windows XP fried my Master Boot Record/File on my original 500 GB HDD as well as my "backup" 500 GB HDD?! :mad:

Proving once again, that anything from Microsoft is c r _ p!!

Fortunately I was able to recover all (?) of my data using a very very old copy of "Get Data Back" which has been a life-saver several times before.

I am tossing out my problematic XP box and am on a new Vista machine for now and hope to migrate to Linux/Mac OS sometime soon.

I have learned that I need to be more aggressive with backup and am looking into imaging my HDD's moving forward on a daily basis.

You would think that after 15 years, people in Rdmond could get something right?! :rolleyes:

Amy