AngelGraves13 Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 So I decided to change my CPU cooler today, which went fine, but I connected my external drives back and Windows screwed up the indexes. 3 of the drives wouldn't work in Windows saying it was inaccessible, but I was able to get it working again by running "chkdsk /F /R /X" in CMD. All the drives are working again, but now I've got random missing files in folders that have them numbered. For example, I had a folder of 300 photos and now there are 286, but the size of the folder is the same, so it's still there, but there's no index entry pointing to it. Anyone know how to recover these files that are absent from the repaired entry. Windows confused the drives and overwrote some portions of the index with another drive's index and now I'm in this mess. Now I remember why I didn't like external drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hum Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 Recuva http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download You should have dealt with one drive at a time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelGraves13 Posted August 2, 2014 Author Share Posted August 2, 2014 Recuva http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download You should have dealt with one drive at a time. I don't see how that would help as the file isn't deleted. Also...I've tried it. They don't show up. Only deleted files do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted August 2, 2014 MVC Share Posted August 2, 2014 "Windows confused the drives and overwrote some portions of the index with another drive's index and now I'm in this mess." What?? Yeah no that is NOT what happened that is for sure!! While I understand your frustration - sorry the OS does not overwrite the index of the drive with another drives?? Now you running chkdsk yup could end up with all kinds of odd stuff. Why did you run chkdsk - what was windows say was wrong with the drives when you plugged them in? When you say they wouldn't work in windows - do you mean they were readable in some other os, linux, OS X, bsd?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelGraves13 Posted August 2, 2014 Author Share Posted August 2, 2014 "Windows confused the drives and overwrote some portions of the index with another drive's index and now I'm in this mess." What?? Yeah no that is NOT what happened that is for sure!! While I understand your frustration - sorry the OS does not overwrite the index of the drive with another drives?? Now you running chkdsk yup could end up with all kinds of odd stuff. Why did you run chkdsk - what was windows say was wrong with the drives when you plugged them in? When you say they wouldn't work in windows - do you mean they were readable in some other os, linux, OS X, bsd?? I have 5 external 4TBs. I disconnected everything and changed my CPU cooler. I did not touch the drives. I connected everything back, but I guess I mixed up the cables, not that I thought that mattered. 3 of the drives didn't show a filesystem in Windows and the other 2 had their names and contents mixed up. I had one drive labeled TV Shows and another Movies and the rest were Images. My Movies drive was now titled TV Shows and about 5 large files were corrupt. I did chkdsk through the command prompt and it deleted a bunch of index entries on 3 of the drives that didn't work and a couple on the other 2. I lost some files, mostly large ones. I lost about 4 movies and a couple of random episodes of TV shows. I already made new MKVs for my movies and TV shows, so that's not really an issue. I had heard before about the dangers of not connecting your drives back in the correct order, but this is nuts. I usually connect them one by one when the PC is on, but I was feeling rather lazy having carried the heavy tower back and forth, so I connected everything and turned it on. That's where the issue originated. I'm now rethinking using external drives for backup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farmeunit Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 It should only be connecting your internal drives in the right ports. I've never heard of this issue with USB drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted August 2, 2014 MVC Share Posted August 2, 2014 "I have 5 external 4TBs. I" "I had heard before about the dangers of not connecting your drives back in the correct order" So these are esata or usb?? Sorry but no does not matter what drives you connect or what order, its not going to Change anything on the disk - NOTHING.. NO labels would get changed.. All of that sort of info is on the disk, the OS does not store that and put it back on a disk, etc. Even internally I could take disk on sata 0 and connect to sata 4 -- its still going to have the same data and label on the disk. Now windows might call it a different drive letter which has NOTHING to do with what is on the disk. But its not going to get corrupted or indexes changed. I don't know what happened to your disks, but it sure wasn't windows corrupting what was on them because you connected it to a different sata, estat or usb port that is for sure!! exotoxic 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tidosho Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 Sounds like a possible hardware issue at drive level but is most likely a unsafe disconnection issue. There's no way you can change a cooler, switch back on and your drives are screwed when you plug them into different ports. USB is universal, evey port works the same and drive letters *shouldn't* change. If they're USB externals, are you sure you've been using the Safely Remove feature? I use USB drives every day and have never in my whole IT career experienced this under correct usage, only when drives are incorrectly disconnected on customer computers. You should always use Safely Remove in the notifcation area near your clock, and regularly run checkdisk. ALWAYS run it in Read Only mode first, then use the /f switch if errors were found. 1. Open a command prompt, by going to Start, Run, and typing "cmd" (without quotes) 2. Then run chkdsk in read only mode by typing "chkdsk x:" where x: is your drive letter (all without quotes) 3. Review the log onscreen. If errors were found, review them, and if you want to fix them, run the same command again, except this time adding /f onto the end, like "chkdsk x: /f" to make it write changes when fixing errors. (All without quotes) I prefer to use the command line version of CheckDisk as it gives more information than the GUI version. Also, after safely removing the drive, always wait at least 30 seconds before unplugging, this allows the drive heads to park safely, unplugging it as soon as you use the safe remove won;'t, and the heads will do an emergency retract, which can damage the arms and heads. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelGraves13 Posted August 2, 2014 Author Share Posted August 2, 2014 I had manually changed the drive letters to my liking, and I think that's what caused the issue. A friend of mine had told me that you have to be careful with changing drive letters in Windows, as it did the same thing to him once. I've never had this issue before, and believed it to be a myth. I guess it's rare, but it can happen. They're all USB 3.0. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted August 3, 2014 MVC Share Posted August 3, 2014 You can change drive letters all you want - again that has NOTHING to do with what is on the drive.. I can call my D drive F or Z if I want, doesn't matter - even internally. The only thing that might happen in a drive letter change is programs might not work if they think something is suppose to be at d:\path\data\file when you change it to z: -- but path\data\file is still going to be there! Now if you change the drive letter on your boot windows c: drive - then sure you can have issues. But guess what - all the data is still there!! I also agree with Tidosho, sounds like you yanked the drive while live to be more what your problem is. I take my usb disk and move from computer to computer and back and forth and etc.. Drive might be X on one machine and Y on another, and can change it to whatever I want - guess what its still called usbdrive as a label, and all my files are there etc. etc. Again I feel your pain that something happened to your data.. But it sure is not because you connected a usb disk in the wrong order or different usb port and windows F'd it the index's that is for sure!! What does your eventlog say about all of this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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