ntfs corrupt

[muno]

Yesterday I was doing my regular 'move-stuff-to-proper-computer' business. When suddenly some of the nfs folders became inaccessible, said something about something, couldn't read because the display is on tv.

So I went to the computer where I wanted to transfer the files from, it said the folders might be corrupt. There was this yellow triangular thing in systray too (I hate it, because it doesn't say what's wrong and where, it just sits there to say somethings wrong).

Well, I thought that good old reboot would do good for it, how wrong was I.
When it started up, it wanted to run chkdsk, which I in good faith let it run. What happened next is unimaginable. chkdsk deletes every single file from the index. When the bootup is complete, I have my 160gb drive empty.

So I go on to recover the files with easyrecoverypro. It finds files with filename 'fil<number>.<extension>', sure there are all my data, but it's not what it's supposed to be. I test-recover some files, and they have incorrect sizes and unknown file types. There are some 2gb tiff files (which were actually 1,2mb), some 100mb mp3 files and so on.

The os is xp.

What should I've done? After a while I gave up and forfeit the data.

[jmichna]

In retrospect, when the original problem occured, I would have probably tried to fix the MBR first. I've had bad experiences with CHKDSK. Is it possible you were hit with a viral infection, causing things to go belly-up?

[PS edit]It's a shame that the current version of Gibson's Spin-Rite program doesn't yet support NTFS. When the next version does become available, I'm getting it ASAP. The older FAT/FAT32 version has worked miracles for me. http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm[/edit]

[Arjay13]

At the risk of sounding rude (which I am NOT trying to be) this is a perfect illustration of why we need to make backups of our data. I have had similar problems (with 98SE) and have had several customers who experienced similar losses.

Needless to say, noone seems to make adequate backups of their files - something that should be as routine as scandisk and defrag.

[muno]

Yeah, I know
I boycotted harddrives for a year or two when my faulty psu broke down 3 harddrives. I was happy with the 30gb deskstar drive that was still working.

The problem with backups is, that with modern drives so huge, there's no viable option to backup 300gb of data (other than mirror raiding, which costs significant amount of cash).

I do have backups of most vital files I have, that's why I'm not that upset about losing everything on that drive

I've understood that ntfs keeps a copy of mft, in case it gets corrupted. Why the intact mft didn't take the place of the corrupted one is a mystery.

I think that has happened once before to me, that when I try to browse the fs it says it's corrupt... But I can't remember what happened last time it occured.

[muno]

It happened again yesterday. 'The file or folder is corrupt and unreadable.'

With that error message, I browsed some websites of possible solutions. There weren't any, everyone just said recover the data and format the drive.
I think the drive is bad, there were some i/o errors. When I get all my data off the drive, I'll do a full surface scan and whatever, and replace it.

As easyrecoverypro (noticed by other users, too) couldn't recognize the file names or their correct size, I tried on someones suggestion getdataback for ntfs (runtime software or whatever), and it seems to do it's work.

I browsed the event viewer, and surely there's a red mark every day. Saying that device1 in ide2 has some problems.

[Arjay13]

Muno
Sorry to hear about the repeat hard drive problem. I suspect that you are correct that the drive has "issues". As for recovery of files, try http://www.r-undelete.com .
They have a program called "R-undelete" (of course) that can handle NTFS and FAT file recoveries. I haven't used it myself, but my sys admin liked it enough that he purchased a copy. Good Luck!
Arjay

[muno]

I think I figured it out.
It's probably related to this ->
http://www.techimo.com/forum/showthr...threadid=94172

WD and Seagate kb's said some stuff about 48bit lba problems with drives larger than 137GB.
So, I updated my xp to sp1a. Hopefully there will be no more data corruption.

[Arjay13]

Muno
So based on the date of that other post, I take it that you didn't actually do that (enable the 48bit LBA) until now.
By the way, I will NEVER purchase a Compaq....it is the only make of PC that I advise my customers NOT to buy. Too much proprietary software, partitioning, hardware etc.
Glad you've got the problem worked out.
Arjay

[muno]

Oops. I have since that other thread moved the harddrive to my main computer.
Actually, data corruption never occured in the compaq computer, it ran just fine for the time it was on it.
Data corruption only started to happen when I put it in my xp computer (the compaq was running w2ksrv).

I think I have the problem worked out, can't be sure until few weeks or so pass by

[xanthamn]

This same problem happened to me and I am running Win2k pro. It happened about 1 week before and after I did a full zero-fill erasure of my 160GB maxtor hard drive.

When I start my compputer, CHKDSK runs and "fixes index" and "delete's file fragments" and at the end of the check there are no files left on my hard drive. I don't want this to keep happening. I do back up the important files on my hard drive so it's not that big of a deal but it is very annoying. Do you think it is a problem with my OS or HDD? Maxtor's error checking utilities say there is nothing wrong with the drive so I can't return it and I don't want to trash it unless I have to. I also don't want to use the drive if I know it is going to happen again.

Has anyone else had this problem and found a fix for it? I found some advice on annoyances.org that says to reinstall the driver for the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC and us the standard PC driver. Dos this work? I'll probably try it.

Any help would be great. Thanks.

-Daniel