Mysterious,, unaccessable data on HD

[D17S]

Ran into a problem. The data on my Maxtor 250 gig PATA HD has doubled in size. It has been around 100 gig for a while now. I must have done something . . . because I now have 200 gig of data on board. It seems to have happened as a single event. This would be great if it was some cool stuff, but I can't get to it to even see what is. "My Computer" is showing that my drive has a single partition of 250 gig with 200 gig of data on board and Windows Defrag utility is showing this 'mystery data' as a 100 gig, giant red block of un-defragable data. I have a directory tree checker utility and it sees this mystery data as a single, 100 gig directory and calls it ‘Wasted Space.’ I agree! I did an uneventful checkdsk and Maxtor's disk check utility MaxBlast is showing the drive is 100% healthy. It boots and runs fine.

I'd just go in and delete it, but Explorer can not see it at all. I can't get to it!

Any ideas about how I might be able to get rid of this mysterious, inaccessible data?

 

[garebo]

If you can get your good data off the drive then the best thing to do is use maxtors diagnostic program and write zeroes to the hard drive. Bear in mind you lose your data when you do that, but thats the best way i know of to fix a hard drive and make it usable again.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[D17S]

Yep, I hear you. So far, I'm not seeing any other way either. That would be the "nuclear option." I'm still looking at some more tactical options. Acronis has a disk director program that claims to be able to help. Anyone know of other good disk management programs?

 

[garebo]

Have you tried seeing what you can do from dos? Using a win98 boot disk you may be able to see your data, transfer it to another drive and then be able to simply reformat that drive gone bad. If you are successful getting your data off this way then use the "write zero" program in the hard drive diagnostics to repair the drive for future use.



Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[D17S]

Dos got it! Ya.

There was a single, gigantic 135 gig file in the root directory that dos finally displayed. "Del c:/ bla bla . . ." Still not sure where it came from but it's gone now.

I'm saved. Many thanks for the tip.

 

[rvnguy]

D17S,

Just for future reference:

Look at your view settings.

OPen My Documents > pick Tools Tab > Folder Options > View Tab.

Now scrool through the selections and make sure that this is checked:

Hidden Files & Folders > Show Hidden Files & Folders

and this is not checked

Hide Protected operating system files

What ever the file (135GB) was it was probably denoted as either one of the above types and could not be seen in Explorer. Making these changes will show all valid file types


rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[D17S]

Roger that. Great little forum ya'll got here. Thanks again

 

[garebo]

Hey, D17S, glad it worked for you!
It may or may not have been able to be seen from windows, but it WAS seen in dos.

However, i would strongly suggest you back that data up and reformat that hard drive. Also, once you have backed up the data from that drive, and before you reformat it, go to the hard drive mfgrs website and download the diagnostics program. Once you have the program running, find and run the utility that "writes zeroes" to that hard drive. This will set it up properly, rid it of errors and rid it of any possible malware\trojan\worm\virus that can survive formatting, they cant survive a zero write. For that reason, I always write zeroes before i format a drive.



rvnguy, do you think it was a windows protected file in this case? I never would have thought it could be a windows protected file, or are you just pointing this feature out?



Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[rvnguy]

D17S & garebo,

This would be great if it was some cool stuff, but I can't get to it to even see what is.

Got this idea from his initial post quoted above.

As he could not see it with normal Win utils, it might have been created, albeit all on it's own, as one of these types of entries.

Does this clear this up?


rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[garebo]

yes, it does, it just didnt seem likely, but the more i think of it the more you just never know! Sure, a wrong click here and a wrong or unknowing button press here and the next thing you know you have a win protected file that you didnt know you made, or it just got there somehow.
I just had to reformat one of my usb hard drives as it was 60 gigs with 15 gigs of data and showing only 25 gigs left instead of 45 to 47 gigs as it should. Somehow it lost about 15 gigs or so. I did the zero write before the reformat, that fixes everything all the time, lol.




Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[D17S]

Thanks guys. This response is too good to be true.

I think I found it. I had a hard drive benchmarker loaded for a bit called IOMeter. I ran it and it just sat there in a "Preparing hard drive" mode for several hours. Actually I forgot about it, went out for a while and when I came back. It was still "stuck" in this pre-check mode. "Ugh," I thought. Not really being that interested, I just moved on.

Little did I know it had been busily writing this massive file to my root directory. I guess its plan was to just keep writing until it ran out of space. Who knows!? The file it was writing wasn't actually hidden, it was just not in a sub-directory. It was in the root. When I added up all my sub-directories, I had the same size as before so I assumed this must be hidden in there somewhere. DOS showed this massive file just below the C:/ . . .which in hind sight, I guess is the way Dos shows files (. . . but there were dozens of other little files in the root too. You know, autoexec.bat, config.sys and all that other pesky stuff that dos didn't show).

Anyway, how did I discover this? I ran IOMeter again and the same thing happened . . . My disk data balloned again. I saw my HD light going non-stop during its "Preparing HD" sequence (which, BYW, it never completed because I executed the program . . in a more literal sense!)A nonstop HD lite and a mysteriously expanding HD data set 'connected' to make me just a bit more sensitive to what was going on this time. It was a 135gig/bite ".IOM" (or some such) file in the root directory.

This was a good mystery that someone else might benefit from . . . but that's the idea of the forum. Again, glad to have found you'll.