Data has disappeared. Any Clues?

[kcm016]

I have a Maxtor 80 gig drive that holds mp3 files, but no operating systems or programs, and it has run perfectly for two years. Now about half of my data has vanished. No accidental deletes, Defrags, viruses or anything like that. I downloaded a demo version of Active Undelete, but the program said there was a drive error. I ran windows error checking twice and it also gave me an error message and would not continue. The existing files on the drive play and work fine. The missing data was the only clue that something had gone wrong. I'm planning on moving the data off the drive and on to DVD's until the drive is working again. Any ideas on a plan of attack for this problem. Thanks in advance.

 

[Bovinicus]

Perhaps your HDD is physically damaged somehow. Try running a surface scan with scandisk, or some 3rd party program that does the same thing.

 

[kcm016]

says it was unable to complete check. should i take a shot with a third party program? thanks for the reply

 

[mauiblue]

Instead of moving the data to a DVD, I would move the data or backup the data of the suspect HDD to an external hard drive (firewire or usb2). I copied some of my photos and mpeg files to a DVD and some of the files got corrupted. It is much easier to copy/move/backup to another hard drive (external or internal) especially if you've got many files or large files. Good luck!

 

[kcm016]

i'll take your advice. thank you. i don't much care about the drive, but i need to recover the 20+ gigs of info that was lost. any more advice you or anyone has on data recovery would be appreciated

 

[kcm016]

IT"S BACK!!!!! HALELLUJAH!! Thanks for the help.

 

[mauiblue]

I still would do some sort of backup plan. Better safe than sure.

 

[soulflyfan]

I still would do some sort of backup plan. Better safe than sure.

safe than sure? anyway, I agree with what your saying, back up everything of importance now, cos if it craps out again, you may never get it back