PLEASE HELP! CANNOT ACCESS FILE! PEASE HELP!

[dat1baller]

The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect."

I just bought this external firewire harddrive. I recorded a song for a client. I went to burn the file in Nero. Inside Nero I decided to change the name of the folder it was in. Now I can NOT open the folder and the file names changed. The files are now named:
q4
o
r4
q4f
etc.

and if I try to open the folder I get this:

W:\q4[] is not accessible.
The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.

The drive is formatted in Fat32, but my PC is NTFS internally.
Win XP Pro
Maxtor External Firewire 500GB drive

Also when I turned the harddrive off and turned it back on, the partition names all changed to "Local Disk".

PLEASE HELP ME RETRIEVE THE DATA!
The Windows installation CD didn't repair it.

The file that I can NOT access was/is a Pro Tools Session folder, including the Pro Tools session and another folder of all of the audio .wav files.

Thank you in advance,

Michael

 

[rvnguy]

Inside Nero I decided to change the name of the folder it was in.

I do not use Nero enough to know how it performs file/dir naming. As you thought and I would have thought it would use normal Win conventions. YThis must not be the case as your results confirm.

I would contact Nero for an explanation of how their software interfaces to the Win system & what you might do to rectify this

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

 

[wolluf]

Have you run chkdsk on the external drive?

why have you formatted a 500GB drive as fat32? At any size, ntfs is far more stable/reliable - but the larger the partition, the more that's true (the file allocation size must be enormous) - fat32 was really a stopgap extension to fat16 when drives got bigger than 2GB. It has similar problems > 128GB partitions (except you can create these larger partitions in fat32 - where apart from nt's 4GB exception, you couldn't in fat16).

 

[jurgen36]

wolluf:
Well I dont know, we format all our drives in fat32, our largest drives are 1.8 terra bytes, no problems at all. We do this for data security. It is much easier to recover a crashed fat32 drive as an NTSF drive. We found that Fat32 is far more stable. Also most utilities will work with it.
Regards

Jurgen

 

[dat1baller]

Bad news, I tried plugging the drive into a different firewire port and now the pc says the drive is unformatted. What the!? Please let me know if you have any ideas.

I formatted the driv int (8) fat32 partitions because I am recording with Pro Tools and would like to be able to access the drive via mac or PC, fat32 seems to be the "more universal" of the formats without using 3rd party programs. This is the first time I used this drive so I can reformat it in NTFS as soon as I recover my clients only copy of this song he paid me to record.

Yes I tried Error-checking but it errored in checking.

 

[cdogg]

Jurgen,
I know your a staunch supporter of FAT32, but you might find these articles interesting:

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/

(shows the advantage of searching under NTFS)

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=63

(challenges the notion that FAT32 is more stable)

One key advantage of NTFS is that it is a recoverable file system because it keeps track of transactions against the file system. When a CHKDSK is performed on FAT32, the consistency of pointers within the directory, allocation, and file tables is being checked. Under NTFS, a log of transactions against these components is maintained so that CHKDSK need only roll back transactions to the last commit point in order to recover consistency within the file system. Under FAT, if a sector that is the location of one of the file system's special objects fails, then a single sector failure will occur. NTFS avoids this in two ways: first, by not using special objects on the disk and tracking and protecting all objects that are on the disk. Secondly, under NTFS, multiple copies (the number depends on the volume size) of the Master File Table are kept.

http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/windows/2005/02/08/NTFS_Hacks.html

(lists several hacks to speed up NTFS in certain environments, as well as other info)

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[JimInKS]

Well as to the NTFS / WIN32 debate. I believe that if you want to share the drive between Mac and PC your only choice is WIN32.

Now as to recoving the files. If it is really critical that you recover them, then you should stop using the drive and talk to a profesional recovery service (very expensive).

The second option would be to find a "competent" PC repair shop that could take the drive out of the enclosure, mount it in a PC and (possibly) pull something out of there toolbox of disk repair and recovery software that will fix the drive.