Topic: Lost data?

[Aaron]

Hello everyone.  
I have stored all my work and mp3s etc on a second harddrive.  After wiping the primary one to install a new version of windows the data on the second seems to have been partially corrupted.  All files and folders are displayed but files are apparently corrupted of not of the correct format.  The fault hasn't differentiated between file types so jpg, mp3 and doc files are effected equally. I would estimate the loss to be between 10 and 20% and obviously this random error picked most of my work that I have not yet backed up! typical!  It also seems that an entire directory is either all working or not.  For example D:\music\music1 works completely while D:\music\music2 doesn't work at all!  
Any help would be appriciated
Thanks
Aaron :'(

[Simon]

I could be barking up the wrong tree entirely, but did you update the OS on the primary drive from a FAT32 file system to NTFS, i.e. did you upgrade from Win9x or ME to W2K or XP?  Not sure if that would be a reason, but perhaps it's just not 'seeing' the data on the second drive, rather than it having been deleted somehow.

As I said, that could be totally wrong, so best wait for a proper techie to reply, which should be soon.

[Aaron]

Sorry I should have made that clearer.  Both hard drives are NTFS and they both were before I started playing around.  I formatted the primary harddrive which initally had XP on it and put the same version of XP back on again.

[Simon]

OK, over to a proper techie!  

[Sandra]

It shouldnt have affected or altered the data on your second drive in any way at all.
Its most likely that you havent re installed the particular program that those files need to be associated with.
Have you reinstalled the programs that created, read or played those files before  

[Aaron]

Hi Sandra
I have installed the necessary programs and codecs, well at least I have installed everything that was on my computer before, including updating to SP2 and all updates.  I agree that the installation of XP itself wouldn't effect the other drive but ignoring that nothing else has happened to my system of significance for a good many weeks.  What is unusual is the fact that files within directories either work or don't and there is no middle ground (as explained in the first post i made).  Do you think this may be something to do with the filing system rather than a loss of data through a faulty drive?  The data should still be there because I haven't touched it since the problems arose.  Are there any programs that could help me?  The only worry I have is that some files lost are movies and so are approximately 750-800Mb each, any software I used would need to be able to handle these large files.
Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide

[Sandra]

Have the file extensions changed on the files that appear to be corrupted ?
If so you may find that by just ading the correct extension to each file corrects it, I had a multi rar file from someone a few days back that wouldnt work as it wasnt recognised as a rar, I added .rar at the end and it showed as the proper icon and opened correctly.
Bit of a pain if you have lots to change but better than losing stuff.
I still cant think why its happened though  

[Aaron]

No, everything is correct.  The file extensions are correct and the right program is associated with the extensions.  I can't see how they could have corrupted, and in such a specific way!

[Sandra]

I wonder if it was during the copying across from your first drive to your slave that an error occurred ?
Did you check that everything was ok before you wiped your primary drive  

[Aaron]

Yes I did check some things but that doesn't mean that it didn't happen then.  With such a low percentage of corruption I may have just picked files that work.