Computer Geeks - I need your help

[MicWayWal]

I took a 250GB internal hard drive out of a workstation and put it in an external case so I could use it on any PC.
The problem: Now I can not find some folders and files that were previously on the hard drive.
What happened?

Back-story: The 250GB internal hard drive was partitioned into two smaller 125GB drives because the work station it was on would not recognize the huge drive. The PC workstation finally gave up the Operating System ghost and refused to boot up. So that is why I am taking out the extra hard drive. Originally the machine was running NT, but I upgraded it to Windows2000 several years ago. It had two smaller drives for programs and OS. I think some of the OS files were on this drive but it did boot up from two smaller drives. I have kept this PC around for personal pictures. I could not repair the OS so I am retiring the PC.

When I browse the drive now, it does show as two drives and I can browse and pull down files from the drive. But some folders are missing and are no where to be found.

Anybody have any ideas on what I can do now?

[ndsimm]

are any of the files or folders hidden? can you view hidden files on your current PC?
when you right click on My Computer and go to Manage, can you see both drives ?

[MicWayWal]

Originally Posted by ndsimm

are any of the files or folders hidden?

No. They were folders I created to hold images. Most of them are there but everything I put on the drive after the middle of May are missing. All of them from May 13 until now. See screen shot below where I show you the folder options

Originally Posted by ndsimm

can you view hidden files on your current PC?

I assume I can because in the folder options Show hidden files is checked. But to be honest with the latest OS I don't know what files to look for to verify. Do you know of some files I could search for to verify.

Originally Posted by ndsimm

when you right click on My Computer and go to Manage, can you see both drives ?

Please see screen shot below of Computer Manager. One item of note I am only missing folders and files on the K drive. Don't know if the screen shot below can shed any light on the problem.

[MicWayWal]

I still need to figure this out. Anyone have any ideas?

[kenw]

when the OS died it may have corrupted some folders. Try a file recovery program (PCInspector is one i've used, the address on the version I have is www.convar.de) to recreate the folders. The files are likely there, the name may be muxed.

[MicWayWal]

Originally Posted by kenw

when the OS died it may have corrupted some folders. Try a file recovery program (PCInspector is one i've used, the address on the version I have is www.convar.de) to recreate the folders. The files are likely there, the name may be muxed.

Will using this program do any damage to the drive? Or make it possible not to get my files off the drive? Currently I am not using the drive except to copy some of the good files and put them on my new PC.

[kenw]

it will not hurt the drive. You will download the program to your newer C: drive, not the "damaged" drive.

You do not want to write anything on the damaged drive.

It only looks for funky things like modified folders and files and such. It will show you each file and folder and let you fix it separately by renaming it to what it was.

Often bad files are renamed "~234.jpg" from "1234.jpg". This program (and others) looks for clues like this and others. It will allow you to rename the file back to 1234.jpg. Basically it finds things the computer is automatically ignoring because of the bad file name. In most cases, the file itself is perfectly fine.

you may also do a general "search" on that drive, look for a specific file that you know is missing. You can search by name, extension (.jpg, etc) or date modified. If it finds the file, you know that the FOLDER is the issue. Find out what it has been renamed and change that back to what it should be.

[MicWayWal]

All right. I downloaded the program. The program went and found the hard drives but it could not find any logical drives. So it would not search for anything. Now it looks like I am back to square one.