Extreme issue -- need assistance

[solbjerg]

hi Amascall

Try this

Start XP/double click my computer/right click on the disk in question/ choose properties/ then the tools tab/choose "Error Checking"

Check "automatically fix errors" and "recover bad sectors"

Click ok/go. It will say the disk is busy and ask you whether you want to schedule it to be done on bootup/choose yes and reboot. Let it do the scan, it may take a long time.

By the way I just had a power failure too, ran a full check disk, luckily nothing amiss, and I only lost the last line in the mail I was writing at the time.

Cheers

solbjerg

 

Hi llynok,

The same thing has just happened to me!

 

I asked for a Defrag and Optimise of an external drive and after realising how long it was going to take, I stopped it. It just sat there saying "stopping" for a good few minutes, so I got on with other things but then an updater on an other piece of software restarted the computer.

 

After the reboot, the drive was gone! I turned the drive off and back on again and windows now sees it but cant access it as it says... "The file or directory is corrupted or unreadable". Chkdsk won’t even look at it.

 

I can only assume that the "stopping" process hadn’t finished properly by the time the computer rebooted.

 

REQUEST: any help in recovering this drive would be greatly appreciated

WARNING: think twice about stopping a Defrag and Optimise

 

Thanks

[solbjerg]

Hi Amascall

Try searching the internet for the same tale of woe and fellow-sufferes, there might be some that have found a solution that worked for them, and possibly it will work in your case too.

Take a look here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/en-us

Cheers

solbjerg

 

 

Hi Solbjerg,

 

Yes sadly, I have done all that.

 

The drive was 500Gb with 200Gb free. I had previously defragged it and it was around 7 to 8% fragmented when I did the defrag and optimise.

 

I just dont know what to do with the thing. Do I just accept that I have lost the files and try reformatting? I am reluctant to do this as I know this will mean no chance of recovering anything.

[Dch48]

Sounds to me like maybe the MFT was being written to when the process was stopped and that corrupted it. Just a guess. I certainly won't be stopping any D & O's just to be on the safe side.

[Amascall]

Hi Solbjerg - Chkdsk was the first thing i tried but after clicking start, the window just closes without even an error.

 

Dch48 - It turns out that it is indeed the MFT. I found an open source programe called testdisk that confirmed the both the mft and its mirror are both corrupt. I dont think its looking very good for this disk. Still at least I know what to search for to TRY to get fix. Thanks

[solbjerg]

Ok Amascall

I found a free revovery tool http://www.stellarinfo.com/ but there might be others.

Cheers and good luck

solbjerg

 

Hi Solbjerg - Chkdsk was the first thing i tried but after clicking start, the window just closes without even an error.

 

Dch48 - It turns out that it is indeed the MFT. I found an open source programe called testdisk that confirmed the both the mft and its mirror are both corrupt. I dont think its looking very good for this disk. Still at least I know what to search for to TRY to get fix. Thanks