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General discussion

I cannot see the files on the hard disk but they seem there?

by enahudi Dec 27, 2009 5:04AM PST

I tried to merge the two partitions (E: and FHappy on my hdd into one but there was an error and they weren't merged, and now I cannot see the files on my F: drive though they seem to be there. XP says 180GB is used. Please help, if the files are there, why can I not see them?

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3 Posts
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Re: files missing
by Kees Bakker Dec 27, 2009 5:16AM PST

So you had an hard disk with (at least) e: and f: partitions. After an unsuccesful merge you still have the e: and the f: partition. The e: is unchanged. The (right click) properties of the f: say 180 GB used. But Windows Explorer shows nothing, just an empty root folder. That's the correct description of the situation.

Try:
- delete f:
- make e: bigger using the free space from f:
- restore the data from the backup of f:
I assume the program you used to do the merge warned about risk of data loss and asked if you had a backup. If you didn't have one, you made one, of course.

If you have no backup, more detective work is needed. What does chkdsk say? The files and folders might be hidden, for example. Or - worse case - they might only be recoverable by a data recovery program. Try RECUVA or GETDATABACK.

Kees

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can't see the files on my hdd
by enahudi Dec 27, 2009 6:10AM PST

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I have no bakup. I checked hidden files, there's none. I tried chkdsk but I think that's the problem here, it starts and keeps giving error messages like "54403 a small error detected and fixed " or deleting something.. I cannot follow the lines, so many of them till it stucks somewhere. It won't finish completely. neither will the merge process, I tried again. nor system restore. They don't work.
I tried data recovery with "Recover My Files", I found only a few pieces of my huge data. There are many System Volume information folders, I don't know if that means anything.
Should I delete the drive before data recovery? or should I keep it this way without any change?

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Re: files
by Kees Bakker Dec 27, 2009 9:29PM PST

You shouldn't have run chkdsk in correction mode. The only thing it probably does is making the mess even greater than it already was. So it's becoming less and less probable that you'll ever see your data back.

Sorry.

Kees

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