from Peter Brown
To Whom It May Concern,
I found you
through"http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2001/debian-user-200104/msg03575.html";
Enclosed is an account of an issue that recently occurred with my 20GB HDD.
15GB of the disk contains a year?s worth of important Graphics files.
Somehow the disk became corrupted. The 20GB HDD physically functions fine,
i.e., it does not makes any clicking noise and is recognized by WinXP.
However, in Properties my 20GB drive is now a 5.98 GB Drive/4.80 used/1.18
free. Moreover, the disc has no visible data on it. It appears that the
Graphics files are still on the disc because the amount that is being
misreported by WinXP is equal to the amount of the lost Graphic files.
If after reading it you feel that there is some chance of restoring the
original file system, please let me know. I am in a very desperate situation
and anxious to recover these files.
Thank you,
Peter Brown
Hardware/Software Involved:
- Mobile Rack Removable Frame for 3.5? HDD
- 1 removable 20 GB HDD (Fat 32)
- 1 removable 6 GB HDD (Fat 32)
- Dell PII 233MHz running WinXP
- Partition Magic 8
The 20GB HDD containing the graphic files was installed into removable case
that fit into a Modular Bay. The drive was named Jonathan and was assigned
the drive letter G:\
The 20GB HDD had approx. 20+ directories, approx. 15GB of Graphic Files on
it.
I recently acquired a 6GB HDD that had 3 partitions?2 FAT32/1 NTFS.
I installed that 6GB drive into the same model removable case that goes into
the Modular Bay.
I took out the 20GB out of its modular bay and inserted the 6GB.
For the first time I installed Partition Magic on the Dell PII WinXP.
I used Partition Magic to delete the partitions on the 6GB, and reformatted
the total 6GB into all FAT32. I named this 6GB HDD ?Change?
I transferred some data to the 6GB Disk and then removed it from its modular
bay and re-inserted the original 20GB HDD and rebooted. Before WinXP
completed booting it went into scandisk/checkdisk. I cancelled
scandisk/checkdisk and Windows completed booting. After WinXP rebooted I
went to access the 20GB HDD:
At first, the 20+ directories on the 20GB Disk were re-named with strange
characters like ?µµþ·ÿ¸ .╒■⌡?; and the name I had given
the 20GB disk, Jonathan, was now re-named to ?Change??the name that I had
given to the 6GB drive.
- I immediately uninstalled Partition Magic 8 and rebooted the computer.
- After WinXP booted-up it went into scandisk/checkdisk mode again and
wanted to fix or correct errors it found. I cancelled at that time and
rebooted.
Now, the 20+ directories, approx. 15GB of Graphic Files were gone and
replaced by approx. 2 directories and 4 files. The 20GB HDD was previously
named ?Jonathan??it was now re-named with an incomprehensible text, text
that looked something like ?µµþ·ÿ¸ .╒■⌡??The approx. 2
directories and 4 files were labeled in kind.
I re-booted Window a third time and again went into scandisk/checkdisk mode
and wanted to fix or correct errors it found?this time I let it run to its
completion.
- The WinXP scandisk/checkdisk found ??truncated, errors, bad links,
orphaned links? and corrected them.
- The scandisk/checkdisk process took some hours to complete.
- After rebooting again into WinXP, the 20GB HDD got re-labeled/re-named
?Local Disc 1?.
- Now the 20GB HDD ?Jonathan? reports as being a 6 GB HDD ?Local Disk? when
used as a slave in any computer that it is connected to.
_________________________________________________________________
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