Files on Hard drive "missing"

[FreeFall]

On one of my hard drives all of my files have disappeared. They are not gone, because there is over 100gb (maybe over 200gb) of files and i still have the same disk space left as when i could see them.
I have tried a free file recovery program (pc inspector file recovery) and got some back, but not all.

Any suggestions to how i can get them back and why i have this problem in the first place? I dont believe (or dont want to believe) that the hard drive is corrupt; As this has happened before, although i cannot remember if it was this hard drive or another. I will replace it to be on the safe side, but all i want is my files back. This must of happened to other people???

Will a defrag help? I used windows defrag tools but over 24 hours later it was only half way thru and seemed to be slowing down further so i stopped it. Also when i ran this it was defragging the "missing" files, so they are still there.

It was literally working one minute, i restarted my machine and then this happened; about 70% of the files were gone. I then tried moving the rest and moved about 10% of them then everything else went too.

[FreeFall]

defragging did not help, i used a different defrag program and it did not work.

I also used a recovery program, it said that none of the files were corrupt, however you have to pay $249 to recover 200GB; Does anyone know any other free programs like this, or have any ideas on how to resolve the problem?

I would go as far as formatting my machine if it would help, but i am not sure it would and dont want to risk it.

If i can find another machine i might try putting it in there.

[Spathiphyllum]

Do NOT format the disk. There's a chance you could fdisk the MBR (Master Boot Record) and that might get you a clean boot region from the disk's back-up. If that's the "format" you are talking about, it might help but I doubt it. Other formatting will certainly destroy the file tables and render your files unretrievable... or ensure that you MUST use a retrieval service.

Have you tried attaching the disk as a non-bootable slave in another system? Perhaps your current system is just having a bad day and a change of environment would coax it into reporting things properly.

Data retrieval from a failed disk is quite expensive and usually requires physically sending the disk to a retrieval service. I have no idea if you are rally at that stage yet or not. I am unaware of an end-user program that will do such retrieval. Oh, wait. One thing you might read up on is Gibson's (at GRC.com) Spin-Rite program. Sounds like that might give you a tip.

Scattershooting here. If I think of more, I'll post.

[FreeFall]

sorry i should of said:

This is my 2nd hard drive. I have 3 in my machine, and this is NOT the one with windows on it. So when i said format i meant formatting the one with windows on it or just reinstalling windows on it to see if i will be able to access my files with a clean version of windows.

If i can get access to the files i can move them over to another hard drive in my machine which is what i am trying to do.

[Spathiphyllum]

Reinstalling the OS to retrieve data on a different physical disk will not improve your situation.

A simpler check would be to use a DOS boot disk (assuming you have FAT16 or FAT32 filesystems on your current OS install) and browse the directory tree on the failing drive. Unfortunately, if you are on Win32 using NTFS, then the filesystem is unrecognizable by typical DOS and such diagnostics would be useless.

You could browse www.sysinternals.com and consider NtfsDos and other disk utilities. They have some cool toys that might give you some options or insight.

[FreeFall]

i am on NTFS. I have just tried networking the machine and sharing the whole drive, but that did not work either.

I dont understand; If i try defragmenting using the windows defrag program i can see the files; If i try using a file recovery program i can see the files, so what is wrong

[Ron]

Maybe you accidentally marked the drive/directory/files as hidden?

You can show them by going to Tools -> Folder Options and clicking on "Show hidden files and folders" on the View tab.


If that's what happened, then you can "unhide" them by right clicking on the folder and selecting properties, and clearing the "Hidden" property.


I have my fingers crossed for you that this, or something else as simple, is the problem.
Good luck.

[FreeFall]

nah it wasnt that, i always show all files anyway.

I did a chkdsk on the drive, it found some unreadable segments and other things, but now it is back and working Some files are missing, but nevermind, its only <1.0gb worth some things i might not be able to get back, some could be backed up its really hard to tell exactly what is gone.

I will now buy a new hard drive, and drop this one from a great height There is probably nothing wrong with it, just a few corrupt things here and there, but i'd rather spend &#163;90 now than loose all my things again.

[Vin DSL]

Can't be of any help here -- everybody has already suggested the usual stuff -- but, I had something very similar happen a while back!

You might find this entertaining...

Gulp! Is Everything Creeping for You?