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newer files gone - files on hd disappeared

files on my hd before 1/4/06 are still there. newer files are gone. it is a 2000 server i was using periodically. last week i installed a scanner and its usb drivers and updated the scanner firmware via the usb and rebooted to a error like can't find operating system. i ran a fixmbr and a fixboot from recovery console but a simple dir c: results in can not enumerate directory. nothing saw anything on the hd except for active partition recovery. i ran the option to restore the copy of the partition table and put the drive in another system and ran file recovery. files before 1/4/06 show up. isn't that weird? i ran the trial of ontrack easy recovery - it sees the same files - those before 1/4/06. so how are the newer files hiding? after recovering the files before 1/4/06 (although I have a august backup of the whole disk and haven't used it a whole lot since then) I rebooted and windows ran an integrity check chkdsk on it and now it shows all of the same files that were recovered i.e. those before 1/4/06 ... i think my next step will be to run spinrite.

-gsgi

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gsgi

ASKER

I am pretty sure he told me it was copying the "backup" of the partition table. but it is possible that it is was never a partition table problem. i asked him why active partition recovery could see the drive and nothing else could. When I asked him that, i did not know yet that files after 1/3/06 were missing. he said that active partition recovery knows to read the backup of the partition table and that is possibly why it could "see" the drive when nothing else could. It was later, after I put it into a different system that I noticed the newer files were not there and I haven't spoken to the guy at lsoft.net (they make active file recovery and active partition recovery) since I found out that newer files are missing. It is a NTFS volume.

what does a byte by byte copy of the hd?

-gsgi

SysExpert

Well it is a little late for that but almost all versions of ghost , and other imaging software as well as Nero have that as an option.

I hope this helps !

gsgi

ASKER

well as for ghost, it has to see a partition to be able to copy it. I didn't try ghost, but acronis and windows and everything, except active file recovery, reported the whole drive as not partitioned - unallocated - nothing there. Will ghost copy the bits of a drive at a drive level, when no partitions per say are being reported?

-gsgi

SysExpert

Yes.
You use te drive copy, not partition copy, and there are options for bit by bit copying.

I hope this helps !

gsgi

ASKER

Here is the 'report' on the drive -- so essentially you were correct, the file table or the system table has been corrupted enough to not show files after Jan 3, 2006.

-gsgi

Hello Greg:

Sorry for the delay in response to you.
It seems that the Master Boot Record and the Partitions Boot Sector are
valid.
The problem must then lie in the file table or file system.
If you are able to start from a Windows Install and Setup CD and launch the
Recovery Console, you can run the CHKDSK command. This will check the file
system and report errors. If there is a problem then I could only advise
connecting this hard drive as a secondary (slave) drive to a working system
and use the Active@ File Recovery component to scan and recover files
directly from it.

Regards,
Eddy Kurms
LSoft Technologies Inc.

SysExpert

Pretty much what I thought.

I hope this helps !