Had errors, but no more but weird files

[Mark G.]

One of my drives was indicating disk errors and wanted to do a check disk in
xp pro. The drive itself is NTFS and is about 250gigi SATA HDD. Anyhow, I
let it do the check error upon reboot of my machine and it seems I no longer
have that issue, but now, on that hard drive is a folder called "found.000".
Inside it is various files such as .mp3's which are similar if not the same
as files already on my machine. Are these duplicate files or bad files? The
disk health of this drive indicates the disk is fine, but I want to double
check. Are there any good freeware programs out there that confirm the
status or health of this disk? So what could have caused this to happen with
that folder and those files? Did something get too fragmented? And lastly,
what do I do with those files that are there? Thanks much for your insight
and such!

 

[Guest]

If you were prompted for something like this:

"10 lost allocation units found in 3 chains.
Convert lost chains to files? (Y/N)"


And if you press the Y key, Windows XP Professional attempts to identify the
folder to which they belong. If the folder is identified, the lost cluster
chains are saved as files.

If Windows XP Professional cannot identify the folder or if the folder does
not exist, it saves each chain of lost clusters in a folder called Found.xxx,
where xxx is a sequential number starting with 000. If no folder Found.000
exists, one is created at the root. If one or more sequential folders called
Found.xxx (starting at 000) exist, a folder that uses the next number in the
sequence is created.

See more here:

Windows XP Resource Kit: Troubleshooting Disks and File Systems
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457122.aspx#ECAA

 

[DL]

Backup data immediately.
Your HD manufacturers site will have a downloadable checking utility
If it confirms failure replace the hd

 

[Mark G.]

Being that my current motherboards onboard SATA controller went out sometime
back, I ended up using a PCI bootable SATA controller card and this
particular hard drive is on of my SATA drives. Mostly all music, so luckily,
I can see where the files are missing from and just restore them back. But
with the HDD configured this with through the PCI controller, I can not
access the disk health through JBOD and therefore can not do anything until
I upgrade the computer this weekend. In the meantime, all is backed up to
another external drive. I wonder if part of the problem that caused this is
that PCI controller for the SATA? What do you all think? Have never had
issues with this drive before. It has been connected this way for about a
year now. Is a Western Digital 250gig drive. Thanks much for any further
input.