yesterday i was copying a few files (aprox 20 gb) from one
hdd to anouther hdd while doing alot of multitasking, then
my system started to crash so i started closeing programs
and canciled the transfer. i figured probly about 2gb had
been transfered by this time.

i tryed to reboot but my system was locked up solid. so i
had to kill it with the power button.

when i rebooted windows2k checked drive F for errors
(drive F was the drive i was copying to, it already had
about 180gb of data on it)

it went though cluster by cluster saying it was 'fixing'
them. it took about 24 hrs to complete (it was a maxtor
6y200p0 drive (200GB))

finaly i got back into windows to learn that my entire
drive went from being filled with 180gb of useable data to
being filled with 180gb of .chk files ....

i had only one folder on the root of the drive .. now i
have one file with a funky name, and one folder called
FOUND.000 .. and in the found folder there are 9999 chk
files ....

please please please please please tell me there is a way
to recover the chk files ... i figured i'd lose the few
files i was moveing over .. but the rest of the drive
should have been in perfect condition! .. i have no idea
why win2k converted all my junk into .chk files

"cs01" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in news:03f201c3d4ae$5a9b96d0
$(E-Mail Removed):

> yesterday i was copying a few files (aprox 20 gb) from one
> hdd to anouther hdd while doing alot of multitasking, then
> my system started to crash so i started closeing programs
> and canciled the transfer. i figured probly about 2gb had
> been transfered by this time.
>
> i tryed to reboot but my system was locked up solid. so i
> had to kill it with the power button.
>
> when i rebooted windows2k checked drive F for errors
> (drive F was the drive i was copying to, it already had
> about 180gb of data on it)
>
> it went though cluster by cluster saying it was 'fixing'
> them. it took about 24 hrs to complete (it was a maxtor
> 6y200p0 drive (200GB))
>
> finaly i got back into windows to learn that my entire
> drive went from being filled with 180gb of useable data to
> being filled with 180gb of .chk files ....
>
> i had only one folder on the root of the drive .. now i
> have one file with a funky name, and one folder called
> FOUND.000 .. and in the found folder there are 9999 chk
> files ....
>
> please please please please please tell me there is a way
> to recover the chk files ... i figured i'd lose the few
> files i was moveing over .. but the rest of the drive
> should have been in perfect condition! .. i have no idea
> why win2k converted all my junk into .chk files
>
>
>

You had a corrupted MFT and chkdsk repaired it the best way it could.
Basically what happened is the directory structure including file names
was lost. Chkdsk assigned each allocated area on your disk a file name.
There is not going to be a good way to recover the files. Some of the
chk files are probably complete files but most of them are segments of
files. The only thing you can do is view them in some type of hex editor
or even something like Notepad. See if you can identify the ones that
are most important and name them back to proper name and see if they can
be opened. I would also look at a report on the drive because it is
possible that it has physical bad clusters that caused the file system
problem. If so you would need to replace it.

Leonard Severt

Windows 2000 Server Setup Team

--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.

> You had a corrupted MFT and chkdsk repaired it the best way it could.
> Basically what happened is the directory structure including file names
> was lost. Chkdsk assigned each allocated area on your disk a file name.
> There is not going to be a good way to recover the files. Some of the
> chk files are probably complete files but most of them are segments of
> files. The only thing you can do is view them in some type of hex editor
> or even something like Notepad. See if you can identify the ones that
> are most important and name them back to proper name and see if they can
> be opened. I would also look at a report on the drive because it is
> possible that it has physical bad clusters that caused the file system
> problem. If so you would need to replace it.
>
> Leonard Severt
>

Or maybe instead of the hex editor:
http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/~tkuurstra/chkmate.htm