gaurav Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 Hi, My computer shut down due to a power cut. After booting, it automatically checked disk drive F: for consistency. While it was running, I saw a tremendous amount of: Deleting corrupt attribute record (48, "") from file record segment 286. Deleting corrupt attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 286. Or something of that sort. About 100GB of my data is gone. Many folders consist of 0KB files now. What has chkdsk done? The drive has been healthy so far. I don't think the drive is failing, but chkdsk has ****ed my F: drive. How do I recover? EDIT: There is also this newly created "bootsqm.vcd" file in F: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Matthew S. Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 And did you ever think to keep a backup of that data? A disk may appear healthy one minute and go south the next, it's the nature of hard drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Nick H. Supervisor Posted December 19, 2011 Supervisor Share Posted December 19, 2011 And did you ever think to keep a backup of that data? :laugh: Backups...hahaha...oh boy, with thinking like that you'd imagine we were in to technology or something! I'm going to assume that guarav didn't make a backup though. If that's the case then you could always try some software recovery tool, providing you haven't touched the disk since the data went missing. There are no promises it would work, and even if it did there are no promises that you would be able to use that disk again, but I guess it is worth a shot. Obviously though, DJ Dark is right. People make backups of their important data for exactly this reason. That said, it takes quite a lot of people an experience like the one you describe before they start creating backups. The lesson has been learned for you though, I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 HawkMan Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 Everything chkdsk removed should also be in the chk something folder on the root of your drive. And the files can be recovered from the if indeed they're not broken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 gaurav Posted December 19, 2011 Author Share Posted December 19, 2011 Well, I know I am playing with fire by not making back ups. I get it, I probably deserve it IF I lose my data. That is not the point of the thread, and I'd appreciate if it isn't mentioned anymore. However, a power-cut cannot possibly destroy a hard drive. Will using recovery softwares make anything worse? Or should I create an image of my disk first? Any constructive help appreciated. This happens at an unfortunate time, HDDs cost 2x their normal price. goretsky 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 cybertimber2008 Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 Heh, I've been at the wrong side of a check disk scan like that before. Happened right before a drive failed, so yours might be heading that way. If you don't have a backup of the files first start by making sure NOTHING writes to that drive. Try using Recuva to try recovering the files and restore them to a different drive. Move your good files over to another drive just to be safe. I'm not sure what happens to files once check disk gets through with them. I know fsck in linux adds them to lost+found and you just have to make them "files" again (name+extension and volia). I'd hope recovery was easy with chkdsk too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 gaurav Posted December 19, 2011 Author Share Posted December 19, 2011 Heh, I've been at the wrong side of a check disk scan like that before. Happened right before a drive failed, so yours might be heading that way. If you don't have a backup of the files first start by making sure NOTHING writes to that drive. Try using Recuva to try recovering the files and restore them to a different drive. Move your good files over to another drive just to be safe. I'm not sure what happens to files once check disk gets through with them. I know fsck in linux adds them to lost+found and you just have to make them "files" again (name+extension and volia). I'd hope recovery was easy with chkdsk too. I hope the HDD will survive till I can back it all up. Everything chkdsk removed should also be in the chk something folder on the root of your drive. And the files can be recovered from the if indeed they're not broken. HawkMan, I don't see any such folder. As mentioned, only a new "bootsqm.vcd" was created. Here is a SS of F: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 cybertimber2008 Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 Did you lose EVERYTHING on the drive? By the looks of it...? Edit: Oh, I see a downloads folder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Farstrider Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 However, a power-cut cannot possibly destroy a hard drive. How wrong you actually are!! Fault conditions and power cuts, even for a fraction of a second can destroy your computer's hard disk and everything on it. It is a fact that, an unexpected power fluctuation or any fault condition can do more than wipe out unsaved data, it also causes down-time, can blow a circuit as well as causing physical damage to the hard disk and not least, cause damage to the PC as well. Moreover, unexpected power change, significantly higher or lower than the optimum and average voltage, can and will cause losses beyond your expectations. This is why UPS systems and power solutions are being regarded as the vital components against power failures or any fault conditions. daniel_rh, Nick H. and goretsky 3 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 gaurav Posted December 19, 2011 Author Share Posted December 19, 2011 Sigh, I should know better. I am just in shock. There is another problem: I don't think it was a power cut. The computer has turned off at least 5 times today (no power cuts). I have no clue why it's happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 lars77 Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 You should be able to find at least some of those files using Recuva or ddrescue (off a Linux boot disc). But you'd want to double-check the recovered files, the reason chkdsk got rid of them is b/c the files were compromised during the power outage, at least some of them are corrupt now. Or like others said the hard drive itself could be having issues now (you could run a diagnostic to find out). Similar situation just happened at my job, power outage caused damage in the mail order system's database files. We ended up restoring a few of them from backup & everything is up & running now. The computer itself sounds like it's having issues unfortunately. Might be overheating? Or power supply is going bad? goretsky 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 gaurav Posted December 20, 2011 Author Share Posted December 20, 2011 The system components are all at proper temperatures. The PSU is what I suspect to be problematic. However, is there a way to diagnose the culprit, given that I don't have any spare parts? The other reason why I don't think my HDD might be dying is because if it was the power surge/cut that caused the problem, some or all the other 3 HDDs plugged in the computer should have had issues. They all seem to be fine. I am backing up whatever data was on the fault drive. Recuva is not showing all the lost files, only some. And they don't have the proper directory structure either, their location shows up as F:\?\? Anything else that I can try? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 cybertimber2008 Posted December 20, 2011 Share Posted December 20, 2011 It could be the power cut that messed up one drive. If it was writing at the time... It sounds almost like it was writing to the file table or something, which might explain why the directory structure is messed up. Checkdisk would depend on a good file table to verify files. Do this next please and report back: Download Fedora 16 Live CD (i686). Burn to CD or use Fedora Live USB creator to create a USB stick version. Pop into computer and boot it. Go to Disk Utility and look for that drive (either by size or model). Post a screenshot of what it shows for SMART information (main screen w/ partitions & SMART detailed screen), and then run a short SMART test, followed by an extended test. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 JJ_ Posted December 20, 2011 Share Posted December 20, 2011 Anything else that I can try? Have a look in event viewer for the chkdsk log file to see where it's placed the corrupt indexes. It will show up under "Applications and Services" -> "Microsoft" -> "Windows" -> "Winlogon". I'd recommend imaging the drive with acronis to avoid your 'lost' data being overwritten Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 gaurav Posted December 20, 2011 Author Share Posted December 20, 2011 Have a look in event viewer for the chkdsk log file to see where it's placed the corrupt indexes. It will show up under "Applications and Services" -> "Microsoft" -> "Windows" -> "Winlogon". I'd recommend imaging the drive with acronis to avoid your 'lost' data being overwritten The log's empty. (there's only one log called in Winlogon, called Operational, which consists of nothing). It is 68KB in size, but I can't see anything in either Friendly or XML view. It could be the power cut that messed up one drive. If it was writing at the time... It sounds almost like it was writing to the file table or something, which might explain why the directory structure is messed up. Checkdisk would depend on a good file table to verify files. Do this next please and report back: Download Fedora 16 Live CD (i686). Burn to CD or use Fedora Live USB creator to create a USB stick version. Pop into computer and boot it. Go to Disk Utility and look for that drive (either by size or model). Post a screenshot of what it shows for SMART information (main screen w/ partitions & SMART detailed screen), and then run a short SMART test, followed by an extended test. I'll try it tonight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Nick H. Supervisor Posted December 20, 2011 Supervisor Share Posted December 20, 2011 The other reason why I don't think my HDD might be dying is because if it was the power surge/cut that caused the problem, some or all the other 3 HDDs plugged in the computer should have had issues. That doesn't make sense. The other drives could have been idle while the one that became corrupted was busy doing something. Just because they are similar/identical devices doesn't mean that they will suffer the exact same fate at the exact same time. There are many things that can cause one drive to become corrupt while the others continue to run without problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 nitins60 Posted December 20, 2011 Share Posted December 20, 2011 That doesn't make sense. The other drives could have been idle while the one that became corrupted was busy doing something. Just because they are similar/identical devices doesn't mean that they will suffer the exact same fate at the exact same time. There are many things that can cause one drive to become corrupt while the others continue to run without problems. in mathmatical terms, it's like, picking/guessing a random number out of 100 numbers :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 gaurav Posted December 20, 2011 Author Share Posted December 20, 2011 The drive that failed was a non-OS drive. The chances of OS drive dying > non-OS drive as it has more IO operations. On this probability alone I concluded thus. But yes, there are way too many other variables. Disregard. I am just glad it was ~100GB and not the entire drive. However, I long to recover that 100GB as painlessly as possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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gaurav
Hi,
My computer shut down due to a power cut. After booting, it automatically checked disk drive F: for consistency.
While it was running, I saw a tremendous amount of:
Or something of that sort.
About 100GB of my data is gone. Many folders consist of 0KB files now.
What has chkdsk done? The drive has been healthy so far. I don't think the drive is failing, but chkdsk has ****ed my F: drive. How do I recover?
EDIT: There is also this newly created "bootsqm.vcd" file in F:
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