Hardrive Question and potential Problem

[Goober]

I recently bought a Maxtor 160 Gig HD awhile ago, and I have not had problems - until now.

I have randomly lost about 20 Gigs worth of Files. Or misplaced, but i am seriously thinking that I lost them. And I mean lost. I mean, I looked in the folder where they should be, and they are just plain not there. Now, I dunno what happened, the files in question were there 2 days ago. I usually keep my computer off, but decided to leave it on for a few days. 2 days ago, everything was there. Then, last night, Windows decided to be a pain in the rear, and not function properly. It was being slow, crappy, etc. I had to shut down explorer.exe like 5 times, which is abnormal.

I need help! i lost some important files! And no, I have not done anything different to my computer, changed nothing.

One thing which might be a hint or something is that is asked me to reformat drive "F" a couple times. that is the drive where the missing files are located. i clicked no, but why is that coming up? Did this drive randomly reformat part part the drive with my important stuff on it? And do, i have not defragged or done the disk cleanup in awhile.

 

[Jeratain]

It is not normal in the least for your computer to randomly ask you if you want to format a drive, unless you specify it to do so.

It is quite possible you are infected with a virus. As for your data, I don't know if you can salvage it unless you use that special recovery software, which, if I recall correctly, is not free.

 

[Strontium_Dog]

I would agree, it does sound like you have picked up a virus.

You need to run some anti-virus software, making sure it's fully updated.


Deleted files haven't gone anywhere, they are still there. All deleting does is remove the flag that tells the OS that the file is there, untill that portion of the drive is written over again, the file is still there. A file recovery program should be able to recover them. Try Tucows or CNet for some recovery programs, most are shareware, but work for a limited time so you should be ok for a one off session.

 

[Goober]

No, i either have a virus, or somebodies hacked into my computer, or something. I am saving what is important, then i am going to call a friend over who is good with computers, and reformat, and re-install Windows. It might be a hassle, but its the easiest Solution.

I have had my computer for 2 years, I previously used Kazaa and Imesh for a long time, this thing is totally infected with Spyware and such. It needs a re-install.

Thanks for the suggestions and tips though.

i don't know or care what happened to it, all that I know that I can solve many problems by reformatting, and re-installing windows. Its about time too, it takes like 4 minutes to start this thing up.

 

[Jeratain]

That's a great idea.

 

[Goober]

Just, out of curiousity, how hard is it to reformat your Hard-drives, and re-install windows? Is it relatively simple, or is it complicated, and involves a lot of steps?

I was thinking about it, and it doesn't SOUND that hard, but is it? And, if its not too hard, would one of your kind gents please tell me how to do it? i would appreciAte that a bunch

 

[raen]

Its XP? you only need to put the CD and boot with it, erase all partitions, create them again, then install (he will ask you to format the new partition where you are installing windows)

If you dont have partitions, make them, at least 2, because when the windows partition goes down or you have problems like this you only need to format the windows partition and have the important data in the other partition.

About the problem really seems like you have been hacked or something, try to install a firewall next time or dont install kazaa, imesh and other programs that you are not sure of being secure.

 

[DaEezT]

Concerning the original problem:
Is that 160 GB HDD a Serial ATA HDD, and if so, is it connected to a controller from Silicon Image?

About the reinstallation of windows: If it's just windows you wanna reinstall it's easy, you just have to boot the CD, select your original partition as target and say you wanna format it, not repair (only two options you get, aparp from 'quit'). After that the setup doen't really give you many real choices and does most of the confiruation automatically.
If you wanna re-format all your partitions I'd delete all partitions during the setup, create one partition for windows and install it on that partition and once you got windows running do the remaining partition/format stuff in windows.
Of course, both steps mentioned above assume you know how to backup your data

If you are unsure you can do a "dry run" on a seperate partition prior to the real re-installation to get a feel for it.

 

[Goober]

Ahh. Ok. Its a bit harder then i thought, something about partitioning, which I have no clue what to do. i'll just let my Computer Savvy friend do it. I'll probably screw it up terribly. Thanks for the info though.

I have been doing a bit of reading on the Internet, and it doesn't look THAT complicated, I think i can figbure out how to reformat, but I have yet to figure out the Boot CD thingie, I assume that it is just my Windows XP CD, but I have also read seomthing about making your own boot CD.

Ya, I have probabley been hacked, i found out when this whole thing started that i had neglected to re-new my Norton Firewall/AntiVirus for several months, I didn't even realize that I needed to, heh. Whatever the hell i got, its bad, and its not going away.

All that I really wanna do is totally reformat, like, clean everything off both drives, then restart by totally re-installing everything, dunno if i can do that though . . .

Thanks for the help though guys!

And i have no idea about what kind of HD is it.