[KevFromNy]

Hello, I recently installed a 200GB western digital hard drive in my computer as my secondary hard drive and use it for storage. My primary hardrive is a 80 Gb Western Digital. Recently the 200 GB hard drive started to randomly deleting some of my PDF and MPG. Then yesterday it just deleted about 90 % of all my musick , video, and PDF files. The folders were there but when I tried to open it it would say invalid or file is corrupt. Does anyone know why tis happen and if it is possible to get those files back. And what can I do to make sure that this doesnt happen again. Is the hard drive now totally useless?

[Ste]

You may have a bad harddrive. It obviously has bad sectors or missing clusters.

Some viruses Can do this.

my suggestion is to back up everything you think is important right now.

Then Have windows reformat it.

[KevFromNy]

So will windows repair the bad sectors or do I need to get a new hard drive. Theres alot of information on there to back up

[Ste]

If you preform Chdsk on it, Windows CAN repair some damage, however: I would just reformat, Because if a reformat doesn't fix it, and the files continue to be lost or damaged, then the drive is bad and you should buy a new one.

Remmeber: Always back up any information you cannot live without.

[KevFromNy]

Ok 2 more questions. I ran checkdisk and formated the drive but now I lost 70 gb. They just dissapeared. How do I get them back. And question 2 How do I backup an entire 200 gb hard drive. I have Nortons system works , would that help?

[Bruce]

Thats the problem, its not seeing the full capacity of your HD.

what are u running? XP? what service pack?

[KevFromNy]

Im running windows xp with service pack 2

[Bruce]

right click my computer and go to manage, then go to disk management and look at it.

is it directly on your mobo?or do u have a card?

[KevFromNy]

Ok I did that and its only reconizing 128 of the 200 GB. Its an internal HD and its connected directy to my computer

[Bruce]

You dont see any unallocated space???

hmmmmmmmmm

what kinda computer is it?Or if its home built what motherboard is it?Go into the bios and see if it's seeing the full amount there.What did u use to format it?