File Access

This is a real mystery. Hope someone can help.

Enviroment:

Windows XP Pro
Hard drive #1 is drive 'C'
Hard drive #2 is Drives 'D', 'E', 'F' and 'G'

What happened:

Had a power outage while on line.

Now a problem (strange):

Hard drive #1 and operating system OK.

Hard drive #2 drive 'D' and 'F' and 'G' OK

XP will not reconize Drive #2 drive 'E'

When we query 'My Computer' we see drives C,D,E,F and G

However the 'size' and 'free space' data is blank.

*****************************************

Using an old Windows 98 boot disk we:

Use DOS - that Operating system we know real good.
This XP is still strange. Can't 'ScanDisk' Can't get the old DOS prompt - can't do nothing yet !

So, we do the following:

A. Run Fdisk - Drive 'E' appears OK - FAT is OK
B. Using DOS command 'Dir' shows directories and files.

And the files are OK - we can use the 'Copy' command and they can be copied to another drive OK.

Folks, this is a 40 gig drive 'E' with multi level directories and thousands of files. Copy would take years. Note: Xcopy will not copy.

Any suggestions on how we can get XP Pro to access the data on Drive E? Need to recover data before we wipe the drive.

Thanks

Joyce Barker

 

Can't 'ScanDisk' Can't get the old DOS prompt

Can chkdsk which is similar to scandisk. It will scan/fix non-system drives with the OS running. For the OS drive and if you have pagefile moved to another drive, whatever that one is, you will get a message saying it can't be done but would you like it to run at next boot. Answer Y(es) and reboot.

start~run~cmd and then chkdsk /? to see your options. chkdsk /f is like a standard scandisk and chkdsk /r is a full scan including drive surface.

You cannot get a real DOS prompt since XP doesn't run as a big program that uses DOS to operate as the non-NT versions do. However, if you boot to the recovery console (from the install CD) you will get a black screen with command prompt and almost nothing of the OS loaded. You can do many of the DOS things there that won't work with the full OS loaded.

I think the first thing I'd try if I were you is chkdsk /r on each of your drives/partitions. Start with C: and then when the scan/repair finishes and the system boots up, do the remaining ones.

If that doesn't cure things, go into Disk Management (use Help to find out how if you need to) and check the drive status. It will show up there and should show as Healthy. If not, there may be an option that will set it to Healthy again.

If no luck with either of the above, post back with specifics. If it fixes you up, post back to sorta complete this thread.

 

Clicked 'properties' on E
Selected tools
Ran error checking

Nothing happened

**********************************
Selected Start
Selected Run
Input 'cmd'
Got a DOS looking box. (cmd.exe)
changed to e:\>

Got message:

"The volume does not contain a reconized file system.
Please make sure that all required file system drivers
are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted. "

************************************************
Clicked 'properties' on E
Selected tools
Ran 'Backup' (input all data)
It did a backup

Message:

"Failed - Volume E is not responding "

************************************************

Is there still hope?

Thanks

 

chkdsk ?

Have been advised to run this here progream called 'chkdsk'

Did a file search. Found it.

Run it.

It brings up a DOS looking screen and is busy
fast checking something. Perhaps drive 'c'.

Finishes up, and zoom zoom, its gone.

Can not see or know what happened.

Want to check my other drives d, e, f and g.

How do we control this thing?

 

Link for chkdsk http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...hnet/prodtechnol/winxppro/proddocs/chkdsk.asp

Also you can bring up My Computer and rightclick each drive go to properties then tools the error checking is the one you want.

Help and Support in XP will go into lots of explanations for you.

 

Check that drive

Got it . Thanks folks.
However, it was of no help.
What I mean is , it works good on those drives
we have 'no' problem with.

It checks drive 'C' Ok
It checks drive 'D' OK
It checks drive 'F' OK
It checks drive 'G' OK

But when we get to drive 'E'
It just stops.

XP Pro has quit reconizing drive 'E ".
The Problem.

Drive 'E' has tons of directories and files on it.
And they are still good.
I can use a Windows 98 boot disk.
Use that "Good Old DOS" and read all of them.
Even transfer them to another drive etc.

But - only one file at a time.
Or at best one type file extention at a time.
This is using "COPY "

The old "XCOPY" used to do a directory will not work.
Seems it too must reconize the presence of drive 'E'.

I got extra hard drives - How can we transfer those "good "
(but XP PRO will not see!) data to "anydrive" so they can be used again?

Somewhere, somehow Drive 'E' lost it's ID.
If we could just get that back !

Thanks again

Joyce Baker

 

jbarker - I merged the two threads you had dealing with basically the same issue.

Sorry to hear that chkdsk wouldn't work with the bad drive. But all may not be lost.

Did you go into Disk Management and see if you could put the drive properly back on line?

If you tried that and no luck, it would be worth trying chkdsk again on E: but from the Recovery Console.

I'm not positive but I think NT Recovery from sysinternals will run with XP as well as NT/2K. If so and if you have (or can borrow) a 2nd machine that is working, the free 'read only' version should allow you to salvage data. Certainly worth a try.