Other External products

[dapperguy]

Hi all,

First off, I am aware that this reads as if I'm not searching the database for simlar problems first, but that's not the case. Most corrupted partitions report that windows won't recognize the partition at all, or that it needs to be re-formatted. Not so with my case. When my computers C drive crashed on me, I felt fine because I had my trusty onetouch backup of all my data. Then...this.

My drive is recognized by windows and opens up. However, once inside the main directory, (in my case, letter F) there are about 30 folders with different types of data. Some of these work fine and are browsable. Some are not. Ironically, all of the ones I NEED such as a My Documents backup are NOT accessible. I tried GetDataBack and I was able to look inside the MyDocuments folder and retreive some stuff. However, all of my photoshop documents and pictures are NOT retrievable.

One odd thing about this case - all applications, including explorer, that see the drive are reporting it as 1.5TB of data! The drive is a Maxtor OneTouch 500gb drive, which partitions at about 466 gb. When it became "unreadable" it started reporting 1500gb. What gives? Any advice? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. Im a photographer and need my pictures. Help?

[MrButkus]

Have you tried Chkdsk from a DOS window.

If the drive comes up as G: (an example)

Get to a DOS box

type in that box    chkdsk_G:_/f_/r  (don't type in the underscores)

This will go through 5 different checks, about 4+ hours worth.

Corruption was caused, in my case, by the -write behind delay-   Turn that off for this drive.

[dapperguy]

Thanks so much for this advice MrButkus, I wasnt familiar with those chkdsk strings. It helped me to clear the indexes or whatever it was doing. Now that it completed I am indeed able to browse the folders and directories that were corrupted without it telling me its unreadable, and the drive is reporting the right size, 466GB. However....  for some reason, the files I needed, which are picture files out of my Nikon DSLR that were in the my pictures folder are bad. I can see all of the jpegs and photoshop files, and they are reporting correct size, yet the thumbnails won't display, and if I try to open them in any program, it says unable to read file, etc. Are these gone forever? They're there... and they still have the data... but theyre unreadable. Any clue? Also, SOME of the pics are fine, but those working files are few and far between, I'd say one in 50 or more. Thank you for any help.

Message Edited by dapperguy on 05-20-2009 07:42 AM

[MrButkus]

It could be those files were corrupted.  There is software that can read corrupt images, but you will only get part of the photo.

Did you take off the -write behind delay - on that external ?

Did you try chkdsk a second time ?

Do that first.

Alas, the reason (and I've been saying this since 1989) - you have a copy of that ?

Can those files be copied ?   never mess with the original.

The thumbnail images are hidden files.. 

Change your folder setting to see hidden files and go to that directory and erase thumbs.db in each folder.

Maybe the thumbnail images are bad.