Windows Vista External hard drive power failure

Dear all, I have notebook with Vista running 24/7 and one 2TB external hard drive connected. Last week there was a power failure, notebook was running but external drive switched off. After this it seems there is some files corrupted, they won´t run. I used check-disk and after this one folder with 800 GB is gone. There was no log after check-disk finished. I checked that drive and there is some hidden directory named "FOUND000" and "FOUND001 ". There is some files with .chk extension and plenty of directories with original files inside. It is possible just to copy that files or is there another way how to get my data back ? THX in advance

 

You say in the title "external hard drive power failure ", but then you say it was switched off

Try connecting it to another computer and see if you can access the files.

Matt

 

Dear Matt,

notebook has its own batery, external hard drive doesn´t. I guess if there is no power in the socket there is some reason of this and for me it is power failure and external hard drive switched off because of no power. I am sorry for misunderstanding, english is not my native language... As soon as I found this problem I start check-disk a there was a message "No access" or something like this, then I took netbook with XP and start check-disk but only with first option without any problems. After this I connect back under Vista and run check-disck again with both options and after this all folder with 1 TB lost. Probably files has been corrupted and check-disk remove them...

 

My suggestion to check it on another computer was mainly to see if the original files/folders could be seen there.

The Found000 folders and .chk files are from "recovery ", so look at what they relate to and see what you can recover if you can.

The new, large external drives usual have some sort of backup system. Is there any sort of RAID built into the system? The data could still be there. Is it two 1TB drives and how is it set up? Check the information about how the HDD(s) is set up. Did you get a CD disk with the external drive and was it set up with that? Check information and FAQs at the manufacturer's website.

Something that makes me wonder about these new large external drives is what happens when you need to recover data off them, where do you put the thousands of gigabytes of data while you repair/rebuild the damaged drive. If you use it only for storage and not backup, you risk losing the data. (Sorry, that doesn't help you at the moment, but what are you going to do to avoid the same problem happening again?)

See if there is some type of built-in backup system like RAID.

Matt

 

Dear Matt,

thank You for Your time. You are right, it is http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=466 device with 2 * 1 TB used in RAID0. I will check manufacterer´s site for some help. App. I have at all about 9 TB at home and probably I will buy Synology NAS with 4 * 1 TB and use RAID5 to prevent failures like this. I didn´t think what will happens when there will be no power in the socket. It is my fault, I know. I just trying to ge some help from people which has similar problem. Somewhere I have UPS, I think I should install it. Anyway You wrote "The Found000 folders and .chk files are from "recovery ", so look at what they relate to and see what you can recover if you can" Could You please specify how to do that ? I have seen there also some file named RestorePoint, but I have no idea how to do it. What to use... Once again THX

 

See the section "The Recoverable File System" here
http://scilnet.fortlewis.edu/tech/NT-Server/filesystem.htm
The "recovered" files/folders are usually not salvageable, but you should back up any of the remaining intact files.

I don't know what "restorepoint" would be. Look at it's size, see if you can find information by right-clicking on it and selecting Properties. It sounds like it was made by some type of backup system, but it might just be the record about the backup.

You obviously know about the pitfalls of using RAID 0. If you are going to rebuild the drive are you going to use RAID 1?

Matt