My girlfriend’s computer’s mobo seemed to be fried, so I pulled out my old machine (Win2k SP4) from 2002. By the way all drives are from Western Digital. My computer had a 40gb C and 250gb D drive. She had a 120gb drive with all files stored on that drive. I wanted to copy all of her files onto my D drive. I copied those files from the 120gb file onto my 40gb drive. Then I installed my 250gb drive and proceeded to transfer the files from the 40gb drive onto the 250gb drive.
First I noticed some of the files/folders would not open. The message was: “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.” Most of the files/folders on the 250gb files would still open. Then one-by-one the rest of the files/folders became “corrupted and unreadable”. Upon reboot from trying to get my Internet connection to work again, now the 250gb drive (D) says used space, free space, and capacity are all 0 bytes. Upon startup BIOS still recognizes both the WD400 and the WD2500 drives.
Any suggestions? I never deleted anything from the WD1200, so all of that data is safe. However, I’m very concerned about a year’s worth of data on the WD2500 that was not backed up. I would appreciate any help you guys can offer!
As I replied earlier, the DOS box pops up, displays a one-line message, and closes before I can read what it says. I even tried opening a bunch of programs on the computer in hopes of slowing it down to do a screen capture. The best I can do is a blank DOS box.
Wait I got it. It says:
“The drive, the path, or the file name is not valid.”
Man… this is weird… the command-line window should stay there and anything that you type there will return (print in the screen) there. Does this drive have a letter? D:, for instance?
First, use the Windows, Run and type cmd, which will open a command window and then type the chkdsk /r
If you just typed the chkdsk /r from the run box, yes it will close after execution. By doing the above the cmd window should stay open and the line of code (obviously and error) will remain displayed.
It is the D drive. I have the drive out for now as I needed to access files still stored on the WD1200 drive. I have a year’s worth of photography, which I fear I may lose if the drive is not fixed properly. I’m going to take the system into a local data recovery business for them to take a look at things. I know there is software out there, but I’m afraid I’ll end up erasing what’s left on the disk.
It may be more beneficial to start from the recovery console (if possible) and run a chkdsk from there (if at all possible).
If not, the O/S should tell you that the drive is locked (if it is a system drive) and ask if you’d like to run the check disk upon reboot.
I know there is software out there, but I'm afraid I'll end up erasing what's left on the disk.
Actually, you'll probably do yourself more good by not using any other software. If you know that the drive is FUBAR, and there's important information on it, it's best to just remove the drive and give it to the guys in white suits in a "clean room." They'll probably be able to restore most things for you. I suggest http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/ if worst comes to worst. They are quite expensive, but they've been around for a while.
After the whole fiasco ends (and hopefully on good terms, without a lot of money spent), I suggest getting a backup solution setup so that this doesn’t happen again. I don’t trust “one” hard drive to any of my data. There are free backup solutions, and expensive ones. Just make sure that you get one.
I had my brother in law use gotomypc and he did some searching around on my computer. He lives in IL so he simply couldn’t come over haha. While running some stuff on CCleaner there were times where we got error messages saying the C drive was corrupt, even though I’ve had no problems with the drive. Well every time I boot up chdsk wants to run. Even if I run it all the way it finds nothing.
We think there is a virus on the computer. Around the same time that the D drive files started being corrupt my Avast! Antivirus would block internet connection when the Webshield was activated. I have to deactivate that provider to allow web pages to load.
The D drive’s master boot record is damaged. He was running Zero Assumption Recovery to see if anything shows. He also said my file names and folder names might be corrupted if I recover the data. I have a ton of pictures, and that would suck trying to put them back in order!
