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Fish boy
08-19-2004, 07:36 PM
I really have a problem with my puter, any advice will be greatly appreciated. I have an external harddrive that I store and back up all of my info on. This include all of my pictures, all music, all work docs... everything!

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that a couple of subfolders in my picture folder showed nothing inside the subfolder and I received a popup that stated that the drive is not formatted, would I like to do it (I did not)? THis only happened in a couple of subfolder and I had full access to the rest of the folders on that drive.

Thinking I might be losign the drive, I shut the power down to the drive until I could get a replacement. I hooked upo the replacement tinight and turned on the damaged drive and recieved a popup window that said the drive (the whole thing now) is not formatted would I like to do so.

I went to computer mamagement drive section and the drive shows that it is health and the it is 100% free. I had close to 80gb of data and files on the drive and have not erased anything. See picture- drive J

ANyidea what would cause a drive to lose a few folders with files in them, then no power for a week, and when powered on, show it as completely empty? Any suggestions as to how to recover the files or repair the drive without losing the data that should be there?

Thanks in advance, I will be completely lost without some of the stuff on there.

fish

PS windows xp, pent 4, norton AV professional w/ automatic updates

PSS I did a disk cleanup a few weeks ago and think I checked the box that said automatically fix errors- not sure if this is relevant since the degradition of the files was not right after, rather progressively degenerated.

PSSS does it mean anything that the new external HD says fat 32 in the properties and the bad drive says nothing (see pic)?

Fish boy
08-19-2004, 08:09 PM
just tried turning off, and restarting again. Tried to check drive's properties through windows explorer and received the following popup message:

J:\ is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect.


Any ideas?

Thanks,

fish

TuxedoPk
08-19-2004, 08:41 PM
Fish- Double check that the external drive is getting power.
See if you can see or hear the drive spinning (as opposed to a fan or light on the external enclosure)

It seems that XP was seeing the presence of a physical disk but was not reading the partition table- hence not knowing whether the drive was Fat32/NTFS, etc.

-Assuming you are logged in with administrator priveleges also check the error log.

-Try changing the drive lettter from J to something else. It is possible the pointer is screwed up- You can always change it back to J if this clears it up.

Fish boy
08-20-2004, 07:30 AM
Fish- Double check that the external drive is getting power.
See if you can see or hear the drive spinning (as opposed to a fan or light on the external enclosure)

It seems that XP was seeing the presence of a physical disk but was not reading the partition table- hence not knowing whether the drive was Fat32/NTFS, etc.

-Assuming you are logged in with administrator priveleges also check the error log.

-Try changing the drive lettter from J to something else. It is possible the pointer is screwed up- You can always change it back to J if this clears it up.

Thanks for the response Tux. Checked Power, it is on and thew disk feels and sounds like it is spinning when powerup.

how does xp not knowing fat32/ntfs make a difference. I asssume it is Fat32 since the replaement drive (which is alos a buslink) is fat32.

checked the erroro log and shows no errors. does this make any sense at all?

will try moving the drive letter when I get home this evening.

Thank you very much for the help, I really appreciate it.

Fish

Fish boy
08-20-2004, 07:49 AM
just changed the drive letter to K. received the same message as I did with J when I tried to check if any data was in the drive from windows explorer:

K:\ is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect.

any thoughts?

Thanks,
Fish

txtaz
08-20-2004, 08:07 AM
Fish,
Yikes Dude. One thing you need to be carefull of is making sure nothing gets written to the drive until the problem is found. If the partition table is messed up it could overwrite good data. There is a secondary partion table that can be swapped if thats the deal. I have a feeling it's not since the failure occured over time and gradual or in steps. A partition table failure would make everything go away. I have never heard of folders dissapearing before, but here are some things which could cause it...
1. The hd parameters in the Bios got change and no longer match what the drive is...(not likely anymore with todays p&p)
2. The diagnostic track (inner most track on a hd that describes what it is) has failed or dust/dirt is preventing the heads from reading it. Still not very likely but does happen.
3. You have a virus eating up your table. That would explain how things went away in stages.
4. Is it a USB drive? Have you changed ports?

Things to do:
Try http://housecall.tredmicro.com they catch things even Norton misses. ONLY scan your root drive C&D
Also Norton utilities has disk tools that are very good. I recommend getting them.
Try booting into safe mode and see if the drives reads
Boot into DOS try changing to the drive
Try the drive on another computer
Last resort - swap hd's on the portables. ie. Pull them apart, put the old hd in the new case. Some of the IO electronics might be buggy.
REALLY last resort - Take it to a pro, NOT one of the high school kids at Circuit City a REAL pro. There are companies that specialise in data retrieval. They are expensive, but if the data is that valuable it's worth it.

For my valuable data I use a RAID array for the had drives. Basically the data is written across more than 1 drive so if one fails, just plug in a new one and off you go. There are several configurations you can use. I also burn my projects to CD OFTEN. CD's are cheap. I just finished a project where we got to the end and the clients hd failed. If I did not do backups often I would have lost all my programing on that puter. Once a project is completed, I only keep the last backup and toss the rest.
f you have any questions, please give me a call
830-249-3477
Best of luck
Wes

txtaz
08-20-2004, 08:10 AM
Haaaaaba Master????
How about that tech section??? Best practices and proceedures could prevent lots 'O headaches for everyone. Also a ts&r section for when it doesn't.
Wes

daboys
08-20-2004, 08:13 AM
here is a link that might help recover the table. Windows registry is p[robably toast as well - regeit is the answer here. Good luck - you will need lots of patients - remember once the partition tavble is restored you still need to uncover and destroy the culprit. :smash:

daboys
08-20-2004, 08:13 AM
:propeller

http://www.atl-datarecovery.com/bp.htm

txtaz
08-20-2004, 09:22 AM
Rutt ro raggy,
I did some more digging Fish and turns out when you get an "Parameter is incorrect" error it means you have lost the filing system. You can use a program such as EasyRecovery Professional 6 to retrieve any files still on the hard drive.
Good luck,
Wes
ps. test the MFT first (Master File Table) before the partition table. If the MFT is bad and you goof the partition table, everything is gonedy

DonziChick
08-20-2004, 09:24 AM
Well I was going to post some suggestions, but I think you guys have beat me to it! I hope everything gets recovered, and let us know what happens when you try it all out.

David O
08-20-2004, 09:56 AM
Wes

I work with David O and I am having a computer problem I was wondering if you have any insight into. I evidently have some spyware on my computer that has changed my homepage in internet explorer to a bogus search page. I have run Norton Antivirus on my computer and it does find some files as suspect. Norton is unable to delete or quarantine them. I have gone to Symantec's website for further information. The web site tells me to go to Add/Remove programs and remove the Search Extender program. When I try to remove it, Windows XP indicates it cannot find the uninstall file and cannot remove it. I have run Adware and SpyBot on my computer. They have both found spyware and removed the items. When I restart internet explorer, the homepage is reset to a microsoft homepage and everything appears to be working fine. A few minutes later a popup message appears and then everything is reset to the bogus homepage. I have tried everything I can think of to get rid of this and was hoping you might have some idea.

Thanks,

Todd

TuxedoPk
08-20-2004, 10:08 AM
Fish- Not knowing your configuration please excuse me if I ask you a few simple questions and offer some possibly simple solutions you've already tried. My gut tells me that some of the symptoms you've described might be unrelated and making troubleshooting more challenging.

-How was the original external drive connected- ie, scsi, parallel... And the new drive?
Did you try unplugging the new drive and rebooting to see if the original drive will now come up?

-Virus-Gut feeling this isn't your problem. Viruses tend to attack the boot/system partition not a misc. drive you have. Running the trend virus checker won't hurt and will eliminate this as a possibility but I'm not optimistic that it will be the problem.

-Try the drive on another computer. If there is anything funky going on in your registry this would bypass that problem.

txtaz
08-20-2004, 10:12 AM
Hi Todd,
Yeah it sounds like you got hit by slimware. Spybot is a good program but sometimes the removal is complicated.
Do this:
Use internet explorer several times to let the slimeware run it's coarse and do what it wants. Reboot the computer twice letting it run for at least 5 minutes after each boot, dance around in circles clockwise with your tongue hangin out the left side of your mouth, reverse and repeate.
Email the log file to me and I will let you know what you have and how to remove it. BTW, I was joking about the dancing part but sometimes it seems like a resurection to kill some of this slimware.
Wes

GKricheldorf
08-20-2004, 10:14 AM
Wes,

Here is a link to help you remove that adware. Now it may all look very complicated, but just follow the directions and you will be ok.

http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18315

txtaz
08-20-2004, 10:26 AM
Hi GKrichdorf.
Thanks for the link. Information is always good. Hijack this, adware and spybot are all good tools. BUT be wary of what you read on the net. I would never recommend pulling the plug on a puter or doing a hard shutdown unless it's absolutley necessary as this site has recommended. There are other ways of ridding the puter of the slimware that itterates the filenames on boot or shutdown (meaning it renames itself every time). Once it has run it's coarse the new filename will be registered. Now we can kill the process and delete the file and registry entries.
Marketers are getting bad about this stuff.
Wes

David O
08-20-2004, 10:35 AM
Wes,

this is Todd again. Which log file were you referring to?

Thanks

David O
08-20-2004, 10:41 AM
Wes,

I believe you are referencing the Adaware log file.

txtaz
08-20-2004, 10:50 AM
Todd,
Send both. The spybot will have the filename and reg entries in the R0 and R1 lines.
Wes
Ohh, once you send the logfiles, do not turn off the puter because the names will change

DonziChick
08-20-2004, 01:35 PM
You can always try the end all solution: reformat :)

I recently had to do that to get rid of the spy/mal/slim wear. It was actually the easiest solution, sadly enough.

Fish boy
08-20-2004, 05:11 PM
Hi Guys and girls,
thanks for all of the really fantastic suggestions. I will try them this weekend when I have a few hours to totally dedicate to getting this resolved. I really appreciate all of the advice. I will let you know how it goes. :crossfing

Thanks,

Fish

Fish boy
08-22-2004, 07:10 PM
ok, tried reassigning the drive and running on another computer. Still no luck. I have another symptom (not related to the changes) with the drive.

It is no making a tick toc sound. everyonce in a while it makes a sound like it normally does when the drive is being read, then back to the tic toc.

Thanks everyone for the fantastic advice and all the time spent trying to find answers to this problem. Looks like the drive is probably shot, and if not, I am so pissed that it will be as soon as I find where I hid my bullets.

thanks again everyone for the help, you rock!

fish

txtaz
08-23-2004, 05:40 AM
Hey Fish,
Sorry to hear about the other symptom. It means your IDE electronics have failed. The sound you are hearing is the read/write heads hitting the case or spindle. You will need a pro to get the drive back. They can pull the drive apart and replace the heads and electronics.
Good luck.
Wes

Fish boy
08-24-2004, 07:16 PM
wes, is the IDE electronice something I can replace? I have the drive out of the case and it looks like 6 screws to take it apart. I am sure you are laughing your a-- off right now at how stupid my question is, but figured I would ask anyway.

Thanks,

fish

txtaz
08-25-2004, 07:23 AM
Fish, I am laughing but only a little. Hey, I tried building an outboard in my kitchen without enough knowledge.
I have tried replacing heads and IDE electronics before without sucess. I have a feeling the heads need to be calibrated to the new electronics and disks. That is past my level of expertise in hardware. Plus, to pull the drive apart, you would want to be in a clean room. Dust, magnetism and static could destroy the drive further.
If you want to chance it you could try pulling the drive apart and replacing the electronice only, NOT the heads. Most boards have a ribbon connector and a few screws. Make sure you are in a dry, clean static free place. IE not on carpet. I would use my bathroom and turn on the heat light for a while. Place a lint free towel on the counter to work on. Also you need to ground yourself to the case of the drive. If you have a grounding strap, your good to go. If not, get a few feet of wire (any gauge, smaller is better for movement), put a clip on one end (clip to case or wrap thru screw hole) strip 1 foot on the other and wrap around your wrist. This eliminates the potential difference between you and the drive. As you may know we carry around 40k Volts of potential static all the time. Not much amperage but enough to fry 5v circuits. Yup, I've done that also. LOL
Also, make sure the new IDE electronics are from the exact same drive.
I might add that the heads hit the case or spindle which could have caused arm bending or head damage. If that is the case a pro must do the repair. You could try the above procedure and if you are very carefull it might work. If not there is always the pro option. Also when working on drives, one should be more like a watch maker than a boat mechanic.
Good luck.
Wes

Beau's Mom
08-28-2004, 12:04 AM
I don't know a whole lot about these kinds of problems - just enough to be dangerous. But I thought I'd add my 2 cents in case you're still having the problem.

If it is a bad spot, there should be errors reported on the device or perhaps even automatic reassignment of the affected tracks to spare tracks on the disk. If it is not a media problem, then it is more than likely, a directory issue, perhaps a cross linked file or corrupt directory (primary or freespace). The best thing is to run some tests first, observe the results, and then formulate a plan of action. (How's that for techno-babble?)

This is probably a very silly question - but one of the best things I've got going is a willingness to humiliate myself - so I'll ask anyways. Have you tried just booting from a Norton Utilities CD on your main hard drive, scanning for the device and trying to recover the files? My personal favorite over Norton is Disk Warrior - but it is a mac based application, so you'd have to plug your external into a Mac to run that one against it. Although given it's just data recovery, I see no reason why you couldn't plug into a mac to try and take back your data assuming you had access to one. (I believe you said your machine is a PC) Norton Utilities should do a reasonable job as well. Perhaps you have a copy of that for the PC - or could get one? I think my worst experience was running disk warrior against a hard drive that had "disappeared" from my desktop. I ended up with a gazillion files that I recovered and had to spend a couple days opening each one - one at a time - to figure out what they were and rename them accordingly. But I got back the files I wanted.

I wouldn't recommend any elective surgery for the drive - at least until you have it diagnosed by a pro. If you decided to have it professionally diagnosed, I would leave it in as close to the condition it was in when it died so they can determine the cause of death accurately and make the appropriate recommendations/repairs. Or at least give them a list of exactly what you've done post-mortem. Maybe you have a copy of Norton Utilities (or can get one?) and can start with the simple stuff before you gut the sucker. The post about the clean room and the wrist strap for grounding I know to be dead on balls accurate - so be careful if you do decide to operate. The RAID arrays are just about failsafe for future reference if you are going to continue to house very important data. CD backups are cheap and easy once you get back online. The hardest part is making yourself run them. (I'm guilty of not running backups as often as I should) I also agree - I don't believe you have a virus. 80 gig is alot to lose. It might be time to ask a pro. Although one has to admire your determination.

If you've already moved past this part - then please disregard. Like I said - I just know enough to be dangerous. GOOD LUCK! ;)

Fish boy
08-28-2004, 07:36 AM
thanks wes and beau's mom, I think I will try the norton utilites forst- what can it hurt, then break out the jack hammer- are those ok to use on harddrives? LOL I really appreciate all of the advice. If I cant get it through notron, then I will try replacing the electronics.

Unfortunately, in addition to pictures and music, the drive has a lot of work documents including confidential/ privileged memos and other matters to or about people that I feel pretty uncomfortable taking to someone else to help me repair. Probably too cautious, but at this point, I would rather give up the info, than have it enter the public domain.

Thanks again for the suggestions, I will let you know how it works out.

Fish

TuxedoPk
08-28-2004, 01:44 PM
Considering the value to you and the confidential nature of what is on the drive I would consider sending it out to Ontrack Data Recovery. They are the gold standard for resolving your type of issue; expect to part with a little bit of your gold.

I would trust that they will handle your problem 100% ethically in terms of confidentiallity as well as will be the best in terms of their technical ability to recover all that is recoverable.

You can check them out at www.ontrack.com

Fish boy
09-13-2004, 10:48 PM
Thanks for the suggestion Tux and sorry it has taken me a few hurricanes to get back to you.

Fish

Cuda
09-14-2004, 03:46 PM
I have a cd with pictures on it that my computer won't open. I got a quote from ontrack about fixing it. They got back to be right away. $100 to diagnose the problem and between $300 and $900 to fix it. I guess I won't being seeing those pictures again! :boggled:

GKricheldorf
09-14-2004, 05:21 PM
Fish Boy,

What kind of drive is it ?

Fish boy
09-14-2004, 06:08 PM
Fish Boy,

What kind of drive is it ?

GKricheldorf, it is a: Buslink USB 2.0 External Harddrive. Just took the cover off, and the actual harddrive is a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9, 120GB ATA/133 HDD, 3.5 Series

Cuda, what happens when you try to open the pics on the CD?

GKricheldorf
09-14-2004, 06:28 PM
I had a Western Digital drive almost go south last week. My plan was to use Norton Ghost to copy the drive to another. This usually always works great, but the WD drive had bad sectors and I wasn’t able to run Ghost. I downloaded the WD drive utilities and did a scan on the drive. After about 5 hours the scan finished. It marked the bad sectors and then I was able to get Ghost to work.

Maxtor makes a drive utility called PowerMax. I would remove the drive from the external chassis and set it up on the second IDE channel. Run the Maxtor software, DO NOT LOW LEVEL FORMAT the drive. This will wipe all the data. Run the diagnostics. It may take a few hours and it may or may not allow you to read the drive. If you are able to read the drive copy over the data to another drive or you can get Ghost and make an exact copy of the drive to another drive.

You can swap the electronics of the drive, but this does not always work and you need the exact same donor drive to do it.

Fish boy
09-14-2004, 06:39 PM
It sounds like a great idea, I will give it a shot if I can get the drive to read. Pretty much hanging up now and not reading. Hopefully the powermax will help.

Thanks again for the suggestion.

Fish