Major disaster.. Lost all Celestia work!

[Chuft-Captain]

A while ago I damaged my laptop which I used for creating all my Celestia addons. Luckily, I had been in the habit of regularly backing up most all my work to an external USB drive (NTFS format), so when I finally got around to getting a replacement laptop, I should have been able to recover all my work.
Now however, I have a major disaster on my hands which could mean that I can no longer access the only backup of all my Celestia work including a couple of major addons still to be released (The lagrange points addon was basically finished, I just hadn't got around to uploading it; and the O'Neill Colony I was hoping to release sometime early next year).
I've been working on the O'Neill Colony for several years so this is a MAJOR LOSS.

Basically here's what happened...
While waiting to get a new Windows 7 laptop, I've been using an old laptop (about 5-6 years old).
I've continued to use the same USB drive to backup work from this temporary machine, but the trouble with this laptop is that it's so old that it only has USB 1.1.
So you get this message whenever you plug in the USB drive:

... but at least it still works, albeit dreadfully slowly. (USB 1.1, as I'm sure you know, is about 1/40th the speed of USB 2.0)

So, being completely fed up with the snails-pace of copying files with USB 1.1, I had this *bright* idea last night:
I have an old PCMCIA card which I originally bought for this laptop to capture footage from a digital camcorder. (It's a combo device with IEEE1394, USB.2.0, and Ethernet connections).
"Great" I thought...it's got a USB 2.0 port as well as the 1394, so I should be able to plug the hard-drive into that port to get USB 2.0 speeds on this laptop.

Here's what happened.
When the USB drive was first plugged into the USB 2.0 port on the PC-Card, it was not recognised:



Here's what the PC Card looks like in the "Remove Safely" dialog:


So after plugging/unplugging a few times to try to get it recognized by the system, I gave up, and plugged it back into the standard laptop USB port (USB 1.1) which it was working on before.
And now it seems that the drive itself has been damaged/corrupted:


(The drive letter is also not available from a CMD prompt)

It's possible that in the course of all this plugging and unplugging, that I inadvertently unplugged either the drive, and/or the PC-Card without using the "Remove Safely" dialog, and this may have corrupted the drive, however, I have got away with this on several occasions in the past when I've been forced to do so (when the USB drive was plugged into the "usual" USB port).

Does anyone have any experience of what's gone wrong, and any ideas on how to either get the drive working again, or at least recover the data from it?
Does anyone know of a reliable/trusted hard-disk recovery tool (one that actually works and isn't just malware/trogans masquerading as a repair tool) that will allow me to recover the data from this drive (~ 200 GB ).

I'd really appreciate your help guys. Otherwise, I'm up sh*t creek!!

Thanks in advance.

CC

PS. Here's what the system looks like when the PC Card is NOT plugged in:

[t00fri]

CC,

this error typically occurs if the file, folder or file system index (Master File Table [MFT] or File Allocation Table [FAT]) is damaged.

Try to repair the damage by running 'chkdsk'.

1) Start->Run
2) type in the Open box
chkdsk /f E:
3) OK

note: during the repair, some data may get lost but that's the price to pay...
Chkdsk may take quite a while to complete.

Fridger

[CAP-Team]

You can also use

chkdsk E: /f /r

which will also scan your drive for bad blocks.

[Hungry4info]

While slightly less than helpful for a post, I can add that I have heard horror stories from others who did not use the "Remove safely" feature for their USB stuff, and had their data corrupted.

[t00fri]

While slightly less than helpful for a post, I can add that I have heard horror stories from others who did not use the "Remove safely" feature for their USB stuff, and had their data corrupted.

There is another crucial point to remember: if one uses the external harddisk with activated write cache for reasons of speed, then "Remove safely" is a must!! The write cache can easily be deactivated, however, and then there is much less danger of corrupting the file system, once the "Remove safely" step has accidentally been forgotten...

Fridger

[Chuft-Captain]

Thanks for the comments,

I know about chkdsk, however I'm not sure what it's success rate is. My main concern is that if I run it (or any other program) and it fails to fix the problem, it could leave the disk in an even worse state (such that even a paid professional recovery service might not be able to repair it).
One thing I wondered is if chkdsk will even work at all when the drive-letter mapping E:/ is no longer available in CMD line mode???

I must admit that i would be a little more comfortable with a program which did a scan first and showed you a listing of what it had found on the disk, before forcing you to commit to the repair.
I know that chkdsk has a read-only mode, but in that case it's not guaranteed to run to completion (because it doesn't lock the disk in that mode), and in any case the read-only step would probably add an extra 2 days to the job!... then another 2 days to do the /F step.

So at the moment, I'm just trying to build up the courage to run it.
As it will probably have to run for a couple of days, I think I can afford to wait until next weekend at least.

In the meantime, if anyone has any other thoughts, suggestions, experiences, or comments about this plan... please share.
(or pray for me, if you're that way inclined )

Thanks again
CC

PS. looking at the sequence of events, it seems to me that the fault was probably caused when the drive was FIRST plugged in to the PCMCIA card, so probably has little to do with "Remove Safely". Perhaps the PC Card is electrically faulty and caused the error because of that.

[t00fri]

CC,

you can always use chkdsk first in 'test' (i.e. no-write) mode. This provides an idea about the status of the file system, before the changes are actually written to the drive. In any case, the data loss will be limited (typically a fraction of a block), and the file system will be in a correct state afterwards. If the file system was in a really bad condition, chkdsk will let you know that it is unable to repair it.

I often used chkdsk and it's Linux analogue and never experienced a worsening of the initial problem...

Fridger

[Fenerit]

Goto to your fiducial computer cornershop or friend and try whether in another computer the problem is the same.

[Chuft-Captain]

Well, I decided there was point in delaying the inevitable, so went ahead and ran chkdsk.
It took less then an hour in the end and seems to have done the job -- There were a number of errors and orphaned files discovered, but the disk is accessible again.
(Not sure if any files were unable to be restored, but so far so good -- I guess I'll find out one day when I go looking for a file and find it's no longer there. )

Thanks for the advice guys. I think as soon as I get a new computer it will be time to backup the backup!
I'd do it now, but with 200+ GB @ usb 1.1 speed --> this might still be running when the "big crunch" arrives!

CC

PS. Fridger, Just curious... what's all this about "activated write cache" ... I've not seen this feature in Windows...where is this option selected?

[selden]

what's all this about "activated write cache" ... I've not seen this feature in Windows...where is this option selected?

select the menu My Computer/Properties/Hardware/DeviceManager/
expand Disk Drives
right-mouse-button-click on device
select Properties item /Policies tab
de/select appropriate button to disable write cache
i.e. select Optimize for quick removal (for thumb drives)
or deselect Enable write caching on the disk (for "embedded" hard drives)

[t00fri]

Well, I decided there was point in delaying the inevitable, so went ahead and ran chkdsk.
It took less then an hour in the end and seems to have done the job -- There were a number of errors and orphaned files discovered, but the disk is accessible again.
(Not sure if any files were unable to be restored, but so far so good -- I guess I'll find out one day when I go looking for a file and find it's no longer there. )

Thanks for the advice guys. I think as soon as I get a new computer it will be time to backup the backup!
I'd do it now, but with 200+ GB @ usb 1.1 speed --> this might still be running when the "big crunch" arrives!

CC

PS. Fridger, Just curious... what's all this about "activated write cache" ... I've not seen this feature in Windows...where is this option selected?

Happy to read that the recipe worked! Now it's your turn: you got to add a nice avatar to your name over at CM (see my reply there). Hope you are now free again for continuing our discussion at CM about the "Fingers of God"

Selden answered already to your "write cache" question. One might add that an activated write cache means that data are written back to the HD from the cache only after a delay in order to optimize speed. That means, of course, that almost anything can happen to the integrity of your file system@HD , if you pull out your drive before these data have been properly written back, including the Master File Table [MFT]...

Fridger

[Chuft-Captain]

Happy to read that the recipe worked! Now it's your turn: you got to add a nice avatar to your name over at CM (see my reply there). Hope you are now free again for continuing our discussion at CM about the "Fingers of God"

If you have any influence with Mona Lisa, perhaps you can convince "her" to allow 200x200 avatars, then I'm sure I could add a nice one.

[t00fri]

Happy to read that the recipe worked! Now it's your turn: you got to add a nice avatar to your name over at CM (see my reply there). Hope you are now free again for continuing our discussion at CM about the "Fingers of God"

If you have any influence with Mona Lisa, perhaps you can convince "her" to allow 200x200 avatars, then I'm sure I could add a nice one.

Apparently, you havn't caught (yet) the essence of Mona's "personality"...
No, we have agreed for a number of technical reasons not to enlarge the avatar size. Sorry.
My "baby face" avatar looks also much better at shatters than at CM. That's life...

Fridger

[Fenerit]

.
.
.
Apparently, you havn't caught (yet) the essence of Mona's "personality"...
.
.

Fridger

Suppositions:

1) Mona is not a real woman;
2) Mona is a real man;
3) Mona is not a real man;
4) Mona is an algorithm (very smart, since is able to recognize threads' relation and to displace forums also with elegant explanation's words; to say a semantic algorithm);
5) Mona is not a semantic algorithm; (since it tends to avoid the Turing's test);
6) Fridger play the joke to rise the couriousity about it.

[t00fri]

.
.
.
Apparently, you havn't caught (yet) the essence of Mona's "personality"...
.
.

Fridger

Suppositions:

1) Mona is not a real woman;
2) Mona is a real man;
3) Mona is not a real man;
4) Mona is an algorithm (very smart, since is able to recognize threads' relation and to displace forums also with elegant explanation's words; to say a semantic algorithm);
5) Mona is not a semantic algorithm; (since it tends to avoid the Turing's test);
6) Fridger play the joke to rise the couriousity about it.

hi hi....1) and 3) are BOTH true. So is 5).
The rest is false

Fridger

[Chuft-Captain]

Guys,

I'm afraid that I'm still having problems with this disk.
As I reported before, after running CHKDSK I did regain access to the disk, but there does seem to be some strange things going on:

1. Some folders appear to be incorrectly named now. ( they seem to have acquired the names of other folders )
2. Today I tried to drag a folder from a sub-directory up one level (to the root directory E:) and this has caused the folder and it's contents to be in-accessible!!!
If I now try to do anything at all with this folder I get an "Access Denied". I can't get into the folder, can't move it back to where it came from, can't share it. etc...

I'm not so worried about 1, but 2 is a very serious issue as I've effectively lost the contents of that folder.

This seems to indicate that the file system index is still corrupted in some way, even after running CHKDSK, so I ran CHKDSK again today (in read-only mode) and it didn't report any errors.

Clearly there ARE still problems or corruption in either the indexes or the security descriptors, but this problem is not being picked up now by CHKDSK (even though it ran to completion in read-only mode).

I'm now very scared to move any folders or files or do any sort of re-organization of this disk.

Any thoughts/advice ?

Regards
CC

[selden]

I strongly urge that you remove your old disk from your computer, get a new disk and install Windows on it from scratch. The problem could be related to the computer's disk controller, so it's important that the old disk not be connected while you try to initialize the new disk.

If that's successful, then reconnect the old disk and copy whatever you can from the old disk to the new one. Do not attempt to move, rename or delete anything from the old disk. Anything you do to it can only make things worse.

Only after you've copied everything you can, use some file-recovery software to try to recover whatever is currently missing. I have no personal experience with file-recovery software, so I can't recommend any particular brand.

[Chuft-Captain]

I strongly urge that you remove your old disk from your computer, get a new disk and install Windows on it from scratch. The problem could be related to the computer's disk controller, so it's important that the old disk not be connected while you try to initialize the new disk.

Actually Selden it's not a boot disk (luckily), but an external USB drive.

I think your advice is probably still applicable, but I was hoping to find a way to repair the damage permanently, so that I wouldn't have to buy a new disk. Do you think replacement is the only safe and permanent option?
(It is strange that CHKDSK no longer reports any damage, even though there clearly is a problem still.)

I hate this whole safe unplug procedure with USB drives... it's prone to accidents like accidental unplugs, and often the drive refuses to closedown to a state where a safe unplug is allowed (ie. "it is not possible to safely unplug at this time... try again later") even after 1/2 an hour or more!

Cheers
CC

[t00fri]

CC,

while I can't guarantee, I suppose copying from your disk should be OK. CHCKDSK has repaired your disk to be logically consistent (otherwise it would complain). So despite looking incorrect at places (wrong dir naming), it should behave like an intact file system more or less.

In unix terminology this "safe removal" is just to mean that the drive has to be unmounted before unplugging it...

Fridger

[Chuft-Captain]

CC,

while I can't guarantee, I suppose copying from your disk should be OK. CHCKDSK has repaired your disk to be logically consistent (otherwise it would complain). So despite looking incorrect at places (wrong dir naming), it should behave like an intact file system more or less.

In unix terminology this "safe removal" is just to mean that the drive has to be unmounted before unplugging it...

Fridger

Thanks for the comment Fridger. I'm sure you're right. I suspect however that any folders which have become "inaccessible" / corrupted (as above) will not be copied, because the windows "copy" will use the index.
I believe the best chance of retrieving lost files will be using some sort of clone tool to get the files onto another disk, and then rebuild the master file index from that. I just don't know which tool would be the best to use.

I understand the reasons for "Safe Removal". The main reason is to ensure that all cached writes are completed before un-plugging, and no files are still open in applications.
It's just frustrating that it sometimes seems to refuse to "complete". This really needs to be 100% reliable in my opinion.
I'm not sure what the cause of this is, but I suspect that windows explorer is sometimes the culprit as there is a long known bug which causes it to leave "open locks" on files. (I think some other apps have the same problem sometimes.)
This I guess could cause the "Safe Removal" to "hang" like it does sometimes.

CC