my hard drive went crazy! 1

[Guest_imported]

I have my hard drive partitioned 3-ways, and one of the drive letters somehow got named with random characters and when I go into it, there's files and folders all named with the same sort of random gobbly-gook. I had loads of files on the drive that I fear I'll never be able to recover and thought that ask before I go ahead and format the partition. Any help??

 

[Jakespeare]

rosesare:
How was this hard drive partitioned ? What software tool(s) did you use to make the partitions ?
Was it FDISK, or some program like Partition Magic ?

I'm not familiar with this type of problem, but it is possible it was caused by the partition failing.

It could also be corrupted Windows System, but that isn't as likely (to my way of thinking).

What I would do with that hard drive is: Move it to another computer - AS THE SLAVE DRIVE - NOT AS THE MASTER,
then you could look at it and see if it is still corrupted.

*** NEXT: I would take a look and see what make of HD that is; then I would go to the manufacturers website and download their diagnostic software and run a test on it to see if it is fully functional.
This will help eliminate some of the guesswork on tracking down the problem.
Most likely the partion information, the MASTER BOOT RECORD has become,,,,,,,,, corrupted, or is no longer intact.

> Running the manufacturers diagnostic software - the basic drive test will not in any way change your data,,,,, if you just run the BASIC TEST.

> Give this a try,,,,,,,, and post back. I'm sure somebody around here has seen something like this before.