The great external hard drive disaster

[coriolis]

About 3 weeks ago I got it in my head that it was time to "clean up" the 500 gb external hard drive that was part of my home network. Big mistake. I ran the windows error checking and defragmented it. That totally destroyed all the folders and converted all the files into fragments. All 10,000-plus files were renamed with a sequential number and the extension *.CHK which is totally useless. At first I couldn't even see the files because they were hidden. Since this wasn't backed up, I stood to loose many pictures and much music.

I found and downloaded a free data recovery tool which will recognize the file type and change the extension. It doesn't recover the original filename though. I am painstakingly going through the files. About half of the files were backups so I'm able to find blocks of files and just delete them. I could go on - what a mess.

The defrag also converted all the program files on the external hard drive so it won't boot up on the nework. That capability is lost forever. I'm able to use it though through the USB connection as a "USB device."

It didn't say anything in the instructions not to defrag it and I got burned royally.

[Stephanie]

UGH!

So, the external drive hasn't taken flight out of the window yet, huh?

[WeatherLovingDoc]

Sorry for your troubles. Maybe someone with much computer hard drive knowledge will soon come by to help you quickly re-organize those files. In the meantime, while you continue your work, I recall the words of your friend:

"He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy."
Socrates

[coriolis]

No Stephanie, I'll keep it as a REDUNDANT storage device now.

Weatherlovingdoc, thanks for the kind words.

The recovery program is painfully slow. It did identify some of the file types that I couldn't determine because it would be too much trial and error. I found some large strings of files in the 3000 to 8000 kb range which looked suspiciously like mp3's I renamed some of them to *.mp3 and sure enough, they would open with Media Player. It looks like 0915.CHK through 1340.CHK were backed-up mp3's that were still on my computer. Deleted the whole block. Pictures start at 1341.CHK I had a little trouble determining that because the program already sifted out the jpegs, but a lot of the pictures were *.tiff files and the program didn't get to that extension yet.

Making progress...... I'm down to 4856 unhandled files.

[Cyclenall]

Why did the defrag program do that?

[MGC]

What defrag program did you run?....MGC

[coriolis]

It was the one that comes with windows XP.

I had saved all the files to it while connected to the network throught the ethernet port. The windows utilities wouldnt work onto the external drive in that configuration.

I disconnected that, and reconnected it directly to my computer throught the USB port. In that configuration the windows utilities could get to it.

All the files were converted to "recovered file fragments" with a number and the extension *.CHK

While the folders all disappeared, the files were still in order. All the files that used to be in the same folder were together and were numbered sequentially. There were small 16 KB files in between each group, and I think that these had something to do with the folders, because I could sort of make out the file names if I renamed it to a *.txt and opened it up in note pad.

Anyway, I'm all done now. e-music allows up to 4 free re-downloads, so I got most of my music back the easy way. I had to sift through the rest and I think I got most of them. I even recovered all my wifes photos.