Windows XP Scan Disc scrambled files

[Dennis]

Windows no longer showed two drives which were two partitions on a hard
drive. When that got cured it showed no files although it showed the
drives were half full. Ran scan disk and it scrambled all the thousands
of files into two or three files and renamed them. Is there a way to fix
this drive? There was about 2000 mp3 and mpg files with all family pics.
As scan disc ran it kept coming up with a message about file truncated.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

It would depend on your skill level, and/or your willingness to pay someone
to provide the skills needed. Certainly the chkdsk utility has preserved the
data for you. The question is can you edit the files back into some
acceptable order. There are disk utilities available. The old fashioned one
that comes to mind is the 'home-built' "Disk Patch" of Peter Norton. There
are a host of utilities for data recovery, depending on your pocketbook
restraints.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Windows no longer showed two drives which were two partitions on a hard
drive. When that got cured it showed no files although it showed the
drives were half full. Ran scan disk and it scrambled all the thousands
of files into two or three files and renamed them. Is there a way to fix
this drive? There was about 2000 mp3 and mpg files with all family pics.
As scan disc ran it kept coming up with a message about file truncated.

XP doesn't have Scandisk. Perhaps you ran chkdsk. It sounds like your
disk had serious problems, which weren't quite "cured". Drives do fail;
that's why there are backups.

In any case, your best bet is to shut the system down and physically remove
the hard disk. Do *not* perform any other "repair" procedures on that drive.

For practical use, reinstall XP and apps to a new disk. New 80 gig hard
disks are in the range of CDN$50.

Either use data recovery software on the old disk, or take it to a data
recovery specialist. Don't expect effective recovery to be either cheap or
inexpensive.

HTH
-pk