Corrupted files

[Ian84]

Couple of problems popped up, everytime XP starts up scandisk trys to check one of my partitions but quits & boots into XP & secondly the recycle bin is permanently full & when I try to empty it, I get " are you sure you want to delete WINDOWS?" but recycle bin is empty when I open it up & I created a blank text document & then deleted it but that didn`t show up either. And now theres some folders that I can`t access on the partition that scandisk checks at startup because windows tells me that they`re corrupted. Now maybe I did a bad thing but I took both drives out of my old PC & put them into the new one & I changed the IDE driver to the standard one so XP would boot.

Also on the partition with the corrupted folders, several documents have appeared but the names of them are just meaningless characters & they won`t delete and this drive had two partitions with ME on one & pictures & stuff on the other but ME corrupted & wouldn`t boot so I deleted that partition.

Is the drive failing and can I recover my documents?

 

[Igorian]

When did the problem first start (ie, before or after you moved the drived to the new machine)?

You mention XP and ME. Have you attempted to make a dual boot system?

How old are the drives?

The drives could be corrupt, or it could be that the File Allocation Table (FAT) is corrupt and the indexes are not pointing to the correct places.

You could check the drives using the manufacturer utilities, which can be downloaded from the appropriate website. This has been covered a couple of times before, but if you can't find it, have a look at the drive and post the manufacturer name and i'll reply with the appropriate link.

Have you tried to repair XP?

 

[Ian84]

I noticed the problem after I put the drive into the new PC. Now to confuse you, I have two harddrives & the first one is a Seagate 40gb split into two partitions which are drives C(16.5gb) & E(20.2gb) and XP home is on C and E is used for programs. Now the other drive is a 16gb WDCaviar that was split into two partitions with ME on the first partition & then I use the second partition(F) to store music, photos, & some .wmv files in a folder labelled accounts! Now when the WDC hd was in my old PC the Win ME boot sector corrupted so I switched to a single OS system, but left ME untouched on the first partition & after I put the WD hd into the new PC I deleted the partition with ME on it but didn`t bother creating a new partition, so there`s about 6gb of unallocated space on the WD hd.

After I rebooted, scandisk popped up and checked drives C & E and found no problems, but when it checked F it displayed a load of file names and it also said that some folders had unrecoverable errors & it turned those folders into files & it also truncated some files & when XP booted I checked some folders on F & I got " F:\mp3 is not accessible, the file or directory is corrupted & unreadable" & now theres some files been created on F that are unnamed & one of these files is 3.94gb!

I did a full system scan for anything nasty but nothing showed, so just what has happened? oh and the Seagate is 2 years old & the WDC is about 5 years old.

 

[Igorian]

Sounds like the drive mappings are incorrect because you have deleted a partition. I.E. You no longer have a D drive, or the F drive has now become D. Try creating a new partition (in the now empty space where ME used to be). You will need to format and then restart. Checks that the drive mappings are now correct. If you previously had a dual boot setup, you may find that those references are now also incorrect, but we can cross that bridgelater if need be.

Here are the links for wdc and Seagate. There are links to the software from the main page.

 

[Ian84]

drive F has always been F & i`ve created a new partition in the empty space but i`m still getting the corrupt file or folder error & another one of these mysterious files has appeared since I rebooted which apparently was created on the 30/05/1981 !

 

[empip]

Partition Magic, allegedly, will update drive links if used to remove a partition ... not perfect tho'

 

[Ian84]

Partition magic might fix some problems but what about the stuff i`ve lost & what are these mysterious files that keep appearing?

 

[breezer]

only a thought:

put the drives as slave into another pc, copy the stuff you want to keep and then format the drives

 

[empip]

How about Spinrite by GRC ??
http://grc.com/spinrite.htm

 

[Ian84]

can`t try spinrite as I they don`t accept solo as a payment method & i`ve managed to salvage most of the important stuff & backup it up to an extenal drive.

 

[Igorian]

If there is stuff you really need, but can't retrieve, u could send me the drive. I used some advanced (and expensive) professional disk recovery software, which so far has never failed and has helped a couple of others on here. My email address is in my profile if you want to go down this route.

 

[empip]

Soon be back ......... Ontrack

 

[kendor]

If there is stuff you really need, but can't retrieve, u could send me the drive. I used some advanced (and expensive) professional disk recovery software, which so far has never failed and has helped a couple of others on here. My email address is in my profile if you want to go down this route.

You still selling those dirt cheap drives Ig? (joking)

 

[Igorian]

If there is stuff you really need, but can't retrieve, u could send me the drive. I used some advanced (and expensive) professional disk recovery software, which so far has never failed and has helped a couple of others on here. My email address is in my profile if you want to go down this route.

You still selling those dirt cheap drives Ig? (joking)