Ok I shut down my PC as I was away over the christnmas hols.When I went I had two perfectly working hard drives C & F

I returned logged back on ,and the contents of my F drive are GONE

Thats everything I have done in game over the past 5/6 yrs along with all my private stuff ie music etc.

Each time I click the F drive icon it tells me it needs to be formatted.

Kain has found all the files ,somewhere, on my PC but they have all been changed and we cant get them to go any where but where they are.

My first response was 'No problem' and off I went to do a system restore

.I get a message though telling me the revert wont alter any recent changes to my F drive.

So the questions are

wt* happened to my F drive and how do i retract back the files from where ever he has found them

I am sure some one out there has the brains to help *fingers crossed*

Thanks in anticipation

Ouch.

Im thinking maybe some kind of static charge or something...

Are you using WinXP?

What I would try (Im not some kind of expert but I have been around the block a time or two) is make some room on the C: drive so that anything you want to keep from F: will fit on there. Now youll need to boot up the computer in DOS mode.

To do this you will need a DOS boot disc specific to your file system. WinXP uses NTFS where older versions probably use FAT32.

Once you get into DOS mode, youll probably be at the A:\ prompt (or whatever the name of your floppy drive is) and youll type "F:\" no quotes and I think that will bring you into that drive. Now type "copy *.* to C:\" if you want to save everything off of F:. If there is alot of stuff, itll take a while, but that should copy everything off of F: onto C:.

Now reboot into Windows and see what happened...

Cheers kettle we will give that a try and let you know how it pans out.

*sigh*

The simple days of DOS. Those were magnificent.

If that doesn't work Tabbs, you could always take out the drive and try it on another PC.

or

Make a silly attempt to copy files (this could be really silly, but if it works, it works) on a CD (if you have a CD writer). (insert tape/floppy/etc. if it's what you got)

or

It depends on where he "found" the files to do anything else I can think of.

How exactly have the files been changed? And are they all within some sort of archive on that drive or in their original locations (folders & directories)?

Is it the slave drive on the same cable as the master? Could possibly be a physical problem with the IDE cable.

I'd open the system and double check (replace if possible) the IDE cable, check the power cable, and the configuration jumpers on the drive. This is just a shot in the dark but definitely do let us know how the files have been altered.

Had to re-iterate that.

Hadnt thought the cable might be borked. Thats a very good possibility.

I figured she did a File Search and just had the cached results from Drive Indexing.

Good call on checking the jumpers too. Maybe even a litle piece of lint or something messed with the jumpers so it thinks it a Master so the comp is confused on which drive to look at...

If you're on XP, this may just be a problem with your master file table (the thing on the hard drive that tells windows where to find each part of every file on your drive). It thinks there's nothing on your drive, but in fact the data IS there - just missing its file pointers. It could also be a problem with the master boot record.

There are 2 tools in XP - one called fixmbr - http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true

and one called fixboot -
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true

You can access both from the DOS-like Recovery Console, which you can get to by booting off of your XP CD. Here's some info on how to use Recovery Console - If you're comfortable with DOS, it will feel like home -
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true

Just some ideas...

Under windows XP, I found tghis trick works...

right click on "My Computer" and select manage and under disk management there, see if the F drive is there. Right click and see if "import" or something similar is there. Try that

ALSO

For the files you cant move/change, do this...

under tools > folder options. Turn off SIMPLE FILE SHARING
now, right click the folder with the files you found and select properties
select the security tab and then ADVANCED

click owner
select your user name you are logged on as, in the list
click that little box to do the subfolders also
hit apply and follow the prompts

IF it works, you SHOULD have access to those files again and be able to get your goodies back. Hope that helps!

Az'Rek M'Nar of Sonoma

Your all wonderful, and your suggestions are being worked through.Ill get Hakan to say where he found the files though etc,as Im no good with technical jargon

you say you shut it down... and prior to that everything worked okey dokey... My semi-educated guess would be that the IDE cable worked loose, (from heat/cooling expansion), or the drive was ready to take the big dive anyway and the jolt of starting back up finally did it in.

Unless you are constantly in the PC case, the jumpers shouldn't have moved much, they are usually fairly settled into place. I have had IDE cables crap out for no apparent reason, replace that ribbon before you get too far into troubleshooting.

If that doesn't help, slave the drive to another PC, copy/remove the files you want to keep, and run a diagnostic check on the drive. If the drive seems to have troubles, I would recommend replacing it before using it for any storage of important items. An untrustworthy drive is a bad place to put irreplaceable photos ect.

But, if its only the cable that went bad, the drive should be fine. I would still recommend backing up your stuff on CDR, and storing them in a safe spot. All my kid's baby pictures are on CDR in the fireproof box, since all we had were digitals.