Corrupt directory?

[Saga]

Hello,

On Sunday morning I turned on my PC with Windows XP Pro SP2. When I
went to a specific folder I discovered that roughly half of my files
were gone.
This is the folder in which I have been doing my work, including and up
to
Saturday night.

For example, if I had somethigng like this:

a003.txt
a023.txt
a032.txt
b002.txt
b045.txt
c012.txt
c033.txt

I now had

a003.txt
a023.txt
a032.txt
b002.txt

The "bottom" files simply disappeared. Since this is a multiboot PC I
booted Win 2000 and used File Explorer to view the folder, but with the
same
results. I believe that either a software or hardware problem occurred
and
somehow corrupted the directory structure which is why only the first
half of
the folder's contents is listed.

I also noted a small delay when opening this folder, perhaps the hard
drive
is doing retries on the read operation. I had a look at some windows
utilities,
both under Settings/Admin tools and Accesories/System tools, but other
that
the Hard Drive Cleanup and Disk Defragger, I did not see any kind of
diagnostic tools that could help me recover those lost files.

Any orientation as to what I can do to recover those files and diagnose
this
problem is appreciated.

Thank you for your time
Saga

 

[Mac]

run chkdsk

 

[Saga]

LOL - I did not expect that! OK, I will do this and report back.

Thanks
Saga

 

[Guest]

If you have a problem and run chkdsk /f, you will almost certainly guarantee
that your files will be lost for good.

 

[Mac]

I didn't say to use the /f parameter...

If you have a problem and run chkdsk /f, you will almost certainly
guarantee
that your files will be lost for good.

 

[Saga]

From your reply I understood that I should use chkdsk, with NO
parameters.

Thanks
Saga

 

[Saga]

Ok, I have run chkdsk. It reported 2 index errors in phase 2.

What course of action do I take now? <g>

Thanks again
Saga