Lance said:
Hi:
When I right click and try to open my secondary NTFS disk on my comp
the message "The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable" is
displayed.
Also when I check it's Properties it says File system RAW
Used space 0 bytes, and Free space 0 bytes.
The smaller partition on the same drive is accessible however with no
problems, and
I am able to boot up with the primary disk just fine. How should I proceed?
Should I boot up, right click and run Disk Error Checking on the secondary
disk, from within the
Windows GUI or what? as I said the secondary partition on this drive is
accessible
Thanks a lot
Paul
In Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc), check the file system type.
Does it list NTFS in there ?
If it doesn't, then the OS isn't going to know it needs to run
CHKNTFS when you ask for a disk check.
There are alternate tools you can use, such as TestDisk.
TestDisk is a tool that attempts to re-compute what the primary
partition table in the MBR (first sector) should look like. But,
it also has the ability to display the files in a partition. It
would be interesting to see if TestDisk can read your NTFS file
system. I generally don't make changes with TestDisk, and use
it mainly for verification, until I know what's going on.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
If you're running that, and want to "stop and get out", try <control-C>.
Another tool, just for examining the partition table, is PTEDIT32.
If using this in Windows 7, you need to "Run as Administrator" to get
this program to work. This will at least show the partition type field.
It doesn't say anything though, about the contents of the partition itself.
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip
In any case, before you proceed further, I'd make a backup
copy of the damaged disk. And the copy type would be "sector-by-sector",
since we know the file system is damaged somehow. The purpose of
the backup copy at this point, is in case you make a mistake while
trying tools. I would even do this before running CHKDSK, because
CHKDSK is an "in-place" repair tool, and the repair could do
more damage instead of less damage. That's why I'm not very
trusting of CHKDSK. I've heard of cases, where the IDE connector
on a hard drive was loose and not making good connections, where
a CHKDSK run completely ruined a partition, because each write
operation attempted by CHKDSK, was corrupted. So CHKDSK can
definitely make things worse, depending on the circumstances.
Repair tools that "copy" the results to another disk, are
safer. In that, they don't attempt to change the original.
A backup is a good thing to have, if your repair attempt will
be the "in-place" type.
Having spare disks to work with, is also essential. It's pretty
hard to work completely safely, if you don't have at least
enough room for a backup, and for scavenged output.
*******
In Linux, I use "disktype", and it does a few checks to ascertain
what type a partition is. On some file system types, it says
things like "4 of 5 votes", meaning for that file system, it
checks five attributes it can find, and if one doesn't "line up"
with the rest, it shows that by means of one vote being lacking.
In home usage, I haven't run into enough interesting test cases,
to stump this program. It's too bad there isn't a Windows port,
because I'd be using it in addition to PTEDIT32. This would be
another way of measuring the level of damage, since this program
uses more than one attribute to determine the file system type.
http://disktype.sourceforge.net/
*******
If you back up your disk first, run CHKDSK, and things are no better,
you can try a file scavenger. One user posting to the group here,
was able to use this to get the files off an NTFS partition. The idea
is, you have a second spare disk handy, to store the files the program
finds. You don't really want the OS writing to the damaged file system.
The originating site and author, are archived here. The download file
doesn't seem to have changed since 2003. The program was originally
given away for free, until the author sold the source to a commercial
company, and shut down the web site. But you can still get a copy.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070101070056/http://www.woundedmoon.org/win32/driverescue19d.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20030303125843/http://woundedmoon.org/win32/driverescue19d.html
I have no idea if that works with a Windows 7 NTFS partition (as the
file system revision number is bumped by one there). The revision number
is relatively unimportant, except if a program does a "safety check"
by reading it first.
Paul
