Checkdisk

[Cally]

I plugged in an old 40gb drive that I have as I needed some of the Word docs
off of it. Couldn't access the folder as it said there was an I/O problem so
I ran error checking on the disk. Now I have lost the whole folder and have a
new folder 'Found.000' with 10,000 ???.CHK files in it. What do I do now? How
can I recover the files that are now in this folder?
thanks
Paul

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Paul.

You have my sympathy. :>(

IF that HD had been recently defragged, you have a slight chance of
recovering some of your .chk files by simply renaming them to .doc
extensions. You might copy a few .chk files to your current working HD
(copy x:\file0001.chk c:\restore\file0001.doc, for example). Then try to
open the .doc file in Word. IF it works, then you can try it on some of the
other .chk files.

The fly in this ointment is that .doc files consist of both our text AND
many control codes that tell Word how to reassemble the file when it is
loaded from the disk. IF the file is in one continuous strip on the disk,
Word MAY be able to get it all in proper sequence and make sense of it.

But, usually, frequent editing and re-saving the document has resulted in
multiple pieces scattered over the hard drive. When ChkDsk runs, each of
those fragments is assigned a new generic name, with no way to reconnect the
pieces in proper sequence. File0099.chk may be the start of the file, but
the next piece might be File0123.chk - or some other apparently-random
number. For these file fragments, renaming them to .doc does no good at
all. Only a Word programmer would have a reasonable chance of reassembling
the document - and even then it would be a tedious task. A decade or more
ago, I used to tackle such projects, but my success rate was near zero, and
file systems are much more complex - and hard drives are much bigger now!

A thorough defragmentation MIGHT have put them back into contiguous sectors,
but any activity between the defrag and ChkDsk would probably have scrambled
them again.

My guess is that you will conclude that the chances of success and the costs
(in time and money) to try mean that those files are lost forever. :>(

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Charlie]

I recently lost data on my RAID. I researched different solutions on the
Internet and found this. http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/irecover.htm I ran it
and it worked great. It ran for a long time but I recovered all my data. The
trial version only lets you retrieve one folder but that is all I needed.
Good luck.

 

[philo]

I recently lost data on my RAID. I researched different solutions on the
Internet and found this. http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/irecover.htm I ran it
and it worked great. It ran for a long time but I recovered all my data. The
trial version only lets you retrieve one folder but that is all I needed.
Good luck.

I'm sure that is good software but the OP does not actually have any lost
data.

It's a good example of why CHKDSK should always be run in the audit mode
first!

I generally tell my clients to first run CHKDSK with no switches...
then, if just a few logical error are found...run CHKDSK /f or CHKDSK /r

If CHKDSK sees *numerous* errors ...CHKDSK /f (/r) should not be run

As mentioned...It's worth a try to rename the chk files back to doc (or what
they were originally)

At least some of the files may possibly be complete. (Fortunately text
files and jpgs are often kept intact or only partially truncated)

OTOH: There is also the possibility that all the data are pretty well
divided up.
Though piecing them back together is possible...with over 10,000 chk
files...it's not going to be practical