help! 60gb gone? xp pros please...

[d.crowley]

i was using diskeeper defragmentation last night when my computer crashed. afterwards, windows xp pro didn't start up anymore. so i installed windows again on a different disk, and had chkdsk repair the old disk, which obviously worked, because I could access the data again. so, about 60% of the files were still in their original location, another 40% were scattered into about 100 subfolders in a "found.000" root folder. so chkdsk restored these files, and they seemed okay. 98 of those folders are irrelevant anyway, so i moved the only two important folders, music & pictures, back to their original location, the my files folder.

afterwards, when i tried to access the 2 folders windows gave me an "access is denied" message. i found this (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;810881) article and regained ownership of the folders and files. so now i can see the directory contents, but whenever i try to open a file, i get the "access denied" message from the individual program (media player, acdsee, notepad...). almost all of the other files on the disk seems to be working just fine, so i think it's very unlikely that just those two folders were completely destroyed. besides, in that case acdsee would give me a file corrupt or unreadable message. so i assume the data is intact. but how can i access it again?

there's a LOT of crucial stuff in those folders, so i desperately need your help... :(

[N[E]rD]

Im not an expert but can you copy the files? If you can copy it burn the important stuff to disks. Format restart...that is probably an unrelistic solution but hey you can try it...and I don't see anyothers!

[thewhitrbbit]

have you tried copying them with DOS? You may have to send it away to a data recovery team.

[d.crowley]

as far as I know, DOS can't read from NTFS file systems.

i've kind of solved the problem, for some reason my Administrator account was able to read the files, even though ownership wasn't assigned to it. weird. now how can i make the files readable from another system / account? is it possible to remove all security references in those files and make them universally accessible?

[RACKnRAIL]

As far as I know, the files should still be readable as long as you never encrypted any of them. I have formatted many times to a NTFS partition and can read all files from the previous installation.

[Arch Stanton]

i ran into a similar problem a while back and I thought i had lost 50gb of mp3's. everytime i tried to reboot i got the blue screen of death, and windows repair features with boot up floppies and the cd-rom were ineffective.

the solution was from winternals adminstrator's pack and i believe was called erd commander. it allows you to mount ntfs partitions in windows mode from a working hard drive and salvage your files to a safe location.

best of luck

[muffenme]

:fire

If you are going to use xp, don't use your hard drive as a single because if xp fails to load and needs to be reinstalled then you wouldn't lose any data.

:hole

[d.crowley]

As far as I know, the files should still be readable as long as you never encrypted any of them. I have formatted many times to a NTFS partition and can read all files from the previous installation.

The files aren't encrypted, I just didn't have the permission to access them. Probably in your case those files weren't in any windows system folders (such as My Files) and therefore not secured... Or maybe there's a way to turn these security features off, dunno.

Anyway, this problem is now solved as well, I just removed all ownership and access rights from the root disk and re-assigned it, and it worked. For some reason. The mysteries of windows... :hole

Now I have a bunch of mp3's, jpg's and psd's of which 10-20% are obviously corrupt. Anybody know a tool that repairs broken image files or mp3s? Or at least something that reads out your mp3 collection folder and tells you which files are damaged?

[nasrules]

Have you tried taking ownership of the actual files, not just the folder? I've had a similar problem recently.

[rctempire]

I know how NTFS works and this is why i chose not to use it on my Maxtor 160GB hard drive. Ntfs seems to be when you lose something its mighty had to recover it, hence why i never used it, but i still cant see about 25GB of my hard drive which is a problem. But the reason i use FAT32 is because of the data recovery situation like you having d.crowley. I know im going to be told off for using FAT32 but i see it as a way that hard drives can be accessable when theyve messed up where as NTFS is really hard to recover from.

[Greylin]

Try using this little program for recovering files from NTFS drives. It's called GetDataBack for NTFS (http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm) . Hope this helps.

[fujow]

I like to use 2 hard drives, that way i keep all my files on the second drive.
If i need to reformat i still have my files.
I also burn my files in case the second drives goes out on me.

[shawners]

i had to use kazaa a year ago to get a program off the net to recover my data i lost. They charged so much for the software, yet freeware would let you recover 10 files or something or show you them and not do a damn thing.
So i got final recovery which is good =)

[Wolfie]

the solution was from winternals adminstrator's pack and i believe was called erd commander. it allows you to mount ntfs partitions in windows mode from a working hard drive and salvage your files to a safe location.

Yea, used a few times myself and recovered quite bit of files. You just have to look for it. ;)

[simon_says_horrible]

I know how NTFS works and this is why i chose not to use it on my Maxtor 160GB hard drive. Ntfs seems to be when you lose something its mighty had to recover it, hence why i never used it, but i still cant see about 25GB of my hard drive which is a problem. But the reason i use FAT32 is because of the data recovery situation like you having d.crowley. I know im going to be told off for using FAT32 but i see it as a way that hard drives can be accessable when theyve messed up where as NTFS is really hard to recover from.yup.. that's what happen to my hard drive when I go back to NTFS three times.. i realized NTFS causes a lot of trouble even my friends had experienced it but since i moved back to FAT32, i never had any problems until now.

[RACKnRAIL]

I know how NTFS works and this is why i chose not to use it on my Maxtor 160GB hard drive. Ntfs seems to be when you lose something its mighty had to recover it, hence why i never used it, but i still cant see about 25GB of my hard drive which is a problem. But the reason i use FAT32 is because of the data recovery situation like you having d.crowley. I know im going to be told off for using FAT32 but i see it as a way that hard drives can be accessable when theyve messed up where as NTFS is really hard to recover from.
I won't tell you off just because you still use fat32, but myself, I just use an external 80 gig HD...It can hold everything I own...end of my backup problem...er, that's of course, it doesn't die?

i had to use kazaa a year ago to get a program off the net to recover my data i lost.
I highly don't recommend d/l software from Kazaa.

[vipp]

I just use an external 80 gig HD...It can hold everything I own...end of my backup problem...er, that's of course, it doesn't die?


Same here, with a 180 GB. Best "back up" around. :gj

[Phoenix-Crash]

Hey man, i had this problem too. If you store your files in "my documents" which is really C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents If you try to access it.. it gives you that crap. I had to mess with it for a while. Try Renaming the folders. Try putting them in an Archive. (ZIP, RAR, ACE) I tried Using linux to get in there and it wont let me.. You can try converting the file systems to FAT32. Before you do that, try putting the drive back in by itself. It might boot up, its happend to me on several occasions. One thing i know that will work though.... Get your XP pro cd out, boot from it, then when it loads up, hit install new or whatever (dont click repair on the first screen) in the next page after you hit Install new or Setup up windows xp. It will give you a repair option... Use that one, just make sure you DO NOT format the drive. When you do a repair it keeps your files, and renews all your system files including your registry.

If this doesnt make sense, Email me thelawrencearm@hotmail.com

convert d: /fs:fat32 (type that into DOS or into Start/Run) This is how you convert... dont do it unless you have given up all hope. I take no repsonisblitly for what happens. Ive never done this so i dont know if it will work.

[CompuGeek]

convert d: /fs:fat32 (type that into DOS or into Start/Run) This is how you convert... dont do it unless you have given up all hope. I take no repsonisblitly for what happens. Ive never done this so i dont know if it will work.

The convert command will NOT convert NTFS to FAT32.

FAT32 is not better/more reliable/whatever than NTFS; it is a more open format though (it can be read/written in DOS/Linux/etc.).

[flyingrhino]

get one of those linux distros that run off the cd (download and burn on a friends machine) and you'll have access to your hard disk.
better still - pop the hard disk into another pc and copy from there.