Hard drives file system changed, files deleted

[Joe]

The file system on my 80G slave hard drive unexpectedly
changed from NTFS to CDFS, and it appears that virtually
all files on it have been deleted. I am unable to access
the drive to corroborate; however, two trial programs show
all folders, but with no contents. One indicates that
there is 13.5 G of data on the drive. The OS is XP.

It appears to be virus related, although Symantec's
AntiVirus program found or blocked any.

How can change the file system back to NTFS, and/or recover
the apparently deleted files, most of which are mp3's?

Tks.

 

[Alex Marshall]

CDFS is the CD-ROM file system; hard disks cannot use this. Are you sure
that your drive letters were not changed and that you are actually seeing
your CD-ROM drive?

 

[JoeC35]

The drive letters have not changed, and in Windows
Explorer, the size of the drive is 80G (under Properties).
The programs that I mentioned earlier also see the drive
as 80G. Something (a virus?) apparently is causing XP to
see the drive as a CD-ROM drive, even though it is clearly
the hard drive. I should mention that the drive still
functions, i.e., as a test I created a folder on it and
saved a test word doc. to it, with no problem. The issue
is to re-coup the lost files and/or to format the drive.
By the way, I cannot format the drive, including when
booting off a floppy and using the DOS prompt.

A real puzzle.

 

[JoeC35]

After the last post, I went back to Win Explorer. Under
properties, the file system is now reading NTFS-- which was
not the case last night.