Hi guys, I'm in a real pickle here. Several days ago I unplugged the USB cable from my 2TB eternal hard drive without using Safely Remove Hardware. I have had trouble before getting it to disconnect that way, so I just unplugged it. When I plugged it back in later, it came on, but didn't show any of my files and folders! It also was no longer named "Hitachi" but simply ":E" drive.
I made sure under Folder Options that I had "show hidden files and folders selected"
I unplugged it and reinserted it
I restarted my computer
I entered "attrib -h -r -s /s /d f:\*.*" in Command Prompt
I tried to view Dir in Command Prompt, and it gave an error message
I plugged the Hitachi into another computer
I entered chkdsk in Command Prompt, and it said:
E:\>chkdsk
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Volume Serial Number is 1AFC-2847
Windows is verifying files and folders...
Windows found errors on the disk, but will not fix them
because disk checking was run without the /F (fix) parameter.
\'Çσ first allocation unit is not valid. The entry will be truncated.
Removing trailing folder entries from \
File and folder verification is complete.
I ran a program called Find and Mount and it found a FAT32 table, which showed me the same thing as before when I mounted it. When I tried deep scan overnight it found two small FAT16 tables which had a grand total of two recoverable jpegs on them.
I ran a program called Recuva, and let it go overnight. The next morning it said it failed because it ran out of memory. I clicked next, and saw it had found several hundred jpegs but they were renamed and without their folder structure, and it wanted me to manually select each one to restore. I had tens of thousands of jpegs stored on that drive.
I read several posts where people were saying to use Window's Error Check, so I did and selected "automatically fix file systems." After about ten minutes it was complete, but my drive wasn't restored!
I went back to Command Prompt and entered "attrib -h -r -s /s /d f:\*.*" and now I see a folder called "FOUND.000" that is 14.6GB in size (I assume the maximum size a Windows folder can be?) with a bunch of files ending in .chk inside. I copied a few to my C drive and changed the extension to .jpg and they opened as jpegs. But still, that's only a fraction of the files I had, un-named and without folders. The large majority (I had 268GB of data on that drive) is still gone.
Any ideas on what to do here? I'm in a funk over this.
I made sure under Folder Options that I had "show hidden files and folders selected"
I unplugged it and reinserted it
I restarted my computer
I entered "attrib -h -r -s /s /d f:\*.*" in Command Prompt
I tried to view Dir in Command Prompt, and it gave an error message
I plugged the Hitachi into another computer
I entered chkdsk in Command Prompt, and it said:
E:\>chkdsk
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Volume Serial Number is 1AFC-2847
Windows is verifying files and folders...
Windows found errors on the disk, but will not fix them
because disk checking was run without the /F (fix) parameter.
\'Çσ first allocation unit is not valid. The entry will be truncated.
Removing trailing folder entries from \
File and folder verification is complete.
I ran a program called Find and Mount and it found a FAT32 table, which showed me the same thing as before when I mounted it. When I tried deep scan overnight it found two small FAT16 tables which had a grand total of two recoverable jpegs on them.
I ran a program called Recuva, and let it go overnight. The next morning it said it failed because it ran out of memory. I clicked next, and saw it had found several hundred jpegs but they were renamed and without their folder structure, and it wanted me to manually select each one to restore. I had tens of thousands of jpegs stored on that drive.
I read several posts where people were saying to use Window's Error Check, so I did and selected "automatically fix file systems." After about ten minutes it was complete, but my drive wasn't restored!
I went back to Command Prompt and entered "attrib -h -r -s /s /d f:\*.*" and now I see a folder called "FOUND.000" that is 14.6GB in size (I assume the maximum size a Windows folder can be?) with a bunch of files ending in .chk inside. I copied a few to my C drive and changed the extension to .jpg and they opened as jpegs. But still, that's only a fraction of the files I had, un-named and without folders. The large majority (I had 268GB of data on that drive) is still gone.
Any ideas on what to do here? I'm in a funk over this.