Files showing as square boxes

[AndrewG1976]

Here's the situation ..

I upgraded the motherboard and cpu on my old PC to a P4 3.0Ghz, when I tried to boot up it wouldn't work.

I bought a new 120GB hard drive and loaded Win2K onto it and it boots up fine. I slaved my old hard drive which is a Maxtor 2 B020H1 running Win98, it has FAT file system. The hard drive is picked up fine by Windows but does not show all the files on it, instead it shows 16 files with a square for the filename. 5 files show 0KB, 7 files show 1KB, 1 file shows 1,280 KB and 3 files show 81,920KB. One folder is also showing with a square for it's name. None of the files can be accessed.

My old hard drive has all my important files on it which I need to access and ideally be able to boot into.

Can anyone tell me what the problem is?

 

[AndrewG1976]

Here is a screenshot of the problem, hope it works:

http://65.54.175.250/cgi-bin/getmsg...32ca601c53fc2f70cfab32f11eba808756e6454709e80

 

[garebo]

I cant get into the website to see the screenshot but i used to get that with hard drives once in a while.
I believe i know how you got this. The bottom line is that you have to reformat that hard drive.
What likely happened is that you had an electrical prob, a brown-out or power surge. These happen in the blink of an eye sometimes so you wouldnt know.
The only other way i know of to get those squares is by putting the ide cable on upside down and powering the unit.

I got those squares a few times, and had many other probs. Then i read an article and installed UPS's on all my computers. I run 24\7 on my main, and i have 4 other computers and i have had one small prob in over 4 yrs.
I lay a lot of problems on poor power. The power grid in most countries was built and set up to handle most things, but NOT computers. ITs not good enough to handle computers and causes problems.
This is all just my opinion but i do have to say how could i not have all the problems i had before, and i had tons!!

Sure, i have learned a lot, but thats not the answer. Not when you get up in the morning and most of your computer is fried! I dont get any more fried computers, i can tell you that.

So reformat the h drive, if you can, and get a UPS.
All you can do is try and get what data you can get from it as it is. You could try one of these very expensive places that deal with these problems but i doubt even they could get the rest of your data, its scrambled and i believe it cant be unscrambled, but maybe they could, not 100% sure on that. Sorry to be negative but you might as well know.





Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[AndrewG1976]

Thanks garebo.

I ran a Maxtor utility on it and it reported the drive was "failing".

So I formatted the drive using the Maxtor tool and now it is as good as new and the utility does not report any errors with it. So hopefully the drive is physically OK.

 

[garebo]

Its been a while since i had to deal with that so i forget. Something is nagging at me. I suggest you only use that drive as a "double-backup". Or, whatever you put on that drive, have it backed up on another drive, at least for a while, make sure it doesnt happen again.

Do you yourself, have any knowledge or suspicion of how it got that way? Just wondering is all.
Also, i'm not aware of wether a virus can cause that or not, again though, i think not, i think its one of the scenarios i painted already, brown-out or power surge, or cable on upside down and powered up that way. And if you havent had the cable off then that narrows it down.

Good luck on that drive. Maybe let us know if there is any more trouble with it or not in a while, couple weeks or whatever.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[AndrewG1976]

One thing I regret not doing is running a chkdsk /f on it prior to formatting. Whether it would have helped or not I'm not sure.

Yes I was going to tell the customer to only use the drive for temporary or unimportant file storage.

This one has baffled me because my customer tells me the drive was working perfectly prior to the mobo/cpu upgrade, where it was the only drive in the PC running XP Home. Then after the mobo/cpu upgrade the drive wouldn't boot up, when slaved we could see it was corrupted. So I doubt it was a virus.

My suspicion is some sort of power surge as you said or the drive was fried by electrostatic discharge.

And the irony of that is my customer is an electrician.

 

[edfair]

Suspect that it was a glitch of the hard drive while it was writing the directory out after a file operation. Something didn't transfer at the right time.

Does your customer want to put anything on a drive that the diagnostics identiy as failing, even though the second pass seems to run correctly? Whatever glitched, and whatever gave the failing error message is probably going to happen again because that is how they fail. Even with a garbaged directory the drive shouldn't have indicated failure unless something was wrong.

 

[AndrewG1976]

I returned the drive to the customer and warned him about it.

Do hard drives tools check the physical stability of the disk as well as the data on it?

It appears when the data on the disk was corrupted, the tool said the drive was failing. But when it was reset and reformatted the tool said everything is OK. Which indicates it's only checking the data and not the hardware.

 

[edfair]

Without doing some reverse engineering to see what is actually being done there is no way to say with certainty. But the test is designed to check for operation on drives that have all sorts of stuff put on them by all sorts of operating systems so the corruption you had was probably transparent to it with the possible exception of the data being shifted enough to affect the CRC.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[garebo]

Im not an expert but i know a fair bit about everday use.
And these power surges and brownouts happen a lot more than we know and cause a lot more trouble than we think or know. Its because we believe that power in the wall to be good and true when in fact, in most places, its ok for a tv or toaster but its not ok for a computer as a computer is far more sensitive and needs purer power, thats where a UPS comes in. Usually a brown-out or surge happens in a part of a second and usually a computer can handle it. When its more than part of a second then some computers cant. With a UPS you are covered, without a UPS you will pay sooner or later. My UPS alarm has gone off a few times in the last year. That was my signal that my UPS was saving my system from damage! We obviously have poor power but so do most homes! We think the power supply failed or the hard drive failed, or something failed. Maybe it did but it was likely bad power caused it!

I can tell you right now that chkdisk or any other program would NOT have fixed that data, so not to worry about that!
The only possible way to get that data would be professional and even then i have doubts.

I have found that, as i stated above when you get those squares its bad or faulty power from the wall or the power supply or both, or someone put an ide cable on upside down.
Now the power issue could have been and likely was intermittent so it only caused the prob on 16 files. But if your customer plugs the puter back into the same place then he could very well have the problem again, thats my take.

You said hes an electrician. Personally i would tell him to check the power at the plug and in the end to get a UPS. That would likely fix the problem and for sure it would protect his system from this and other similar problems. surely he would understand about the power being less than desirable at the wall outlet.

Unless, of course, he or someone else put the ide cable in upside down and doesnt want to tell you, lol. I know that will do the square thing as i did just that years ago.

One last thing, he has a newer mobo so his bios would have
s.m.a.r.t technology. So have his enable it in the bios and it will keep an eye on that hard drive and should tell him in advance that it is going to fail. If the problem happens again and s.m.a.r.t doesnt warn in advance it would be because of the power problem happening without notice and s.m.a.r.t wouldnt have a chance to notify.





Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[AndrewG1976]

Thanks for the advice.

I don't think you can plug an ide cable in upside down as the pins won't fit, you wouldn't be able to get it in without do some serious damage to the socket.

 

[garebo]

Oh yes you can. I did it and i did it very easily years ago, lol.
And since then i have had customers bring their computer in with the hard drive connected upside down at the ide connector. Its rare but i have seen it and heard of it quite a few other times.
Not suggesting it happened in this case, just that we have to go thru all the possibilities as per your problem. And when i hear of those squares i pretty well know its from one of two sources. So in your case it was a power issue likely, not someone installing a cable upside down.

Now installing the molex connector upside down, that would be hard,lol.
And if you think that is weird, i saw a picture on the net. A computer repair person had pictures of the ram he took out of a motherboard. The mobo was supposed to take ddr ram and this guy only had sdram. No problem, he used a hacksaw and cut out the 2 notches for sdram and he even filled in the spot in the middle where the ddr ram is notched!!! I could not dream this up, and i saw the pics too!! They are still there, dont know if i could find them. Anyway, of course, the mobo and the ram got fried, really fried. Weird things get done to computers, trust me, and an ide cable upside down is not even that weird!




Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[edfair]

How about an AMP plug? It isn't molex on the hard drive.
But they will go backwards on some of the one piece thin plastic shells with just a little bit of force.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[garebo]

Oh ya, heard molex was only the name of a mfgr anyway, even though most people call them molex.
I dont know if ive seen anyone put one in backwards, lol.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[edfair]

Goes back to the days of the SSSD 5" floppies, when AMP Special Products was in a dead heat with Molex for the board level connector market.
I fried a Seagate by putting one in backwards. I claim, of course, that it was dark and far inside the box, but it still was stupid of me. Cost me a brand new drive. Knew exactly what I had done when I heard the sizzle.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[garebo]

Another honest person heard from, lol! We've all done our share of really dumb moves.
I'm fairly new, wasnt around those days for the 5" floppies, actually started with win98.
I remember a guy on another forum just reamed hell outta me for just saying the molex word, yet its here in this forum a gazzilion times. Ed, whats up with amp and molex. I know molex is a mfgr, is amp a mfgr as well? I cant be the only one who doesnt know the scoop. If they arent molex connectors at the h drive then are they amp connectors?

Seems like this thread is finished so we can go ahead with this?
thanks


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[edfair]

AMP was AMP Special products. Now a part of Tyco. They both have connectors that can be used for similar purposes, both with pluggable pins. AMP has a bevel, molex has squared notch for interlock. The pins are similar but the molex are smaller and their latches are at a different place. Molex have 2 latches, AMP 1.
I took on the education of the world after spending several service calls over several days because a hard drive company used molex pins in an AMP block causing an intermittent power drop on a controller. This was MPI controller box with WD controller hooked to a Radio Shack TRS80 Mod 2. Way back when.
I know people use Molex as the name. I occasionally take the issue up with people who care about what they do.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[garebo]

So if a person must use a name the they should say it like this: " Connect your hard drive via the ide connector and the amp connector."

All the so-called molex drive connectors on a power supply are all actually amp connectors?
Would that be a correct statement?

Yes, i do care. I like to at least try to know what i am talking about. I recall someone reaming me out once but i see everyone(most everyone) calling this connector a molex and i fall back into the habit it seems.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[garebo]

oh, and thanks for taking time to explain.

Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[edfair]

The M/B connector is Molex (20 & 24 dual) and the 3 1/2 floppy also.
Some of this goes back to the original IBMPC and the Tandon floppies they specified. Then Shugart was coming out with a hard drive that used the same one because it was common with their floppy drive.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.