Any way a directory can simply disappear on a hard drive?

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I am having a curious problem which is that an entire working directory has
simply disappeared from my hard drive. It is in a subdirectory off the My
Documents folder in Windows XP Pro and I have been actively using it for
about seven years. Suddenly I cannot see it at all and cannot find any
reference to any common words (such as names) used in it when searching the
hard drive using XP's search function. Even more unusually, it has
disappeared in the last four weeks and I have my recycle bin protected by
Norton Systemworks. I haven't emptied the bin and can see all files which
have been deleted since about last January and it simply isn't there:
Neither the directory nor the files in that directory. My hard drive is
split into two partitions and obviously I have checked both of them and cant
find it anywhere.

I presume a crack on the platter with the directory in it woudl have shown
up as somehting worse than this? ANyone got any ideas on where it could be
or how I can restore it?
 
news.rcn.com said:
I am having a curious problem which is that an entire working directory has
simply disappeared from my hard drive. It is in a subdirectory off the My
Documents folder in Windows XP Pro and I have been actively using it for
about seven years. Suddenly I cannot see it at all and cannot find any
reference to any common words (such as names) used in it when searching the
hard drive using XP's search function. Even more unusually, it has
disappeared in the last four weeks and I have my recycle bin protected by
Norton Systemworks. I haven't emptied the bin and can see all files which
have been deleted since about last January and it simply isn't there:
Neither the directory nor the files in that directory. My hard drive is
split into two partitions and obviously I have checked both of them and
cant find it anywhere.

I presume a crack on the platter with the directory in it woudl have shown
up as somehting worse than this? ANyone got any ideas on where it could be
or how I can restore it?
Click to expand...

If you have been using it for 7 years I presume that mens the drive was
formated as FAT not NTFS and the OS has been upgraded at some point. If
that's the case I'd strongly suspect some form of disk coruption.
 
news.rcn.com said:
I am having a curious problem which is that an entire working directory
has simply disappeared from my hard drive. It is in a subdirectory off the
My Documents folder in Windows XP Pro and I have been actively using it
for about seven years. Suddenly I cannot see it at all and cannot find any
reference to any common words (such as names) used in it when searching
the hard drive using XP's search function. Even more unusually, it has
disappeared in the last four weeks and I have my recycle bin protected by
Norton Systemworks. I haven't emptied the bin and can see all files which
have been deleted since about last January and it simply isn't there:
Neither the directory nor the files in that directory. My hard drive is
split into two partitions and obviously I have checked both of them and
cant find it anywhere.

I presume a crack on the platter with the directory in it woudl have shown
up as somehting worse than this?
Click to expand...

A crack in a platter would have shown up as a loud bang followed by a rattle
as the head was physically ripped off of the positioner and then tossed
around the inside of the capsule. A crack in a platter in a disk is a
catastrophic failure.
ANyone got any ideas on where it could be
or how I can restore it?
Click to expand...

Odds are that you accidentally dragged it into another folder--this is one
of the most annoying things about Windows--it lets you do this without
warning. Some folders are not searched by Windows Search even if you set
it to search hidden and system folders, so you might have to hunt for it
manually.

Failing that, it is possible that your directory structure has been
corrupted.
 
it to search hidden and system folders, so you might have to hunt for it
manually.
Click to expand...

John,

Do you have more info on this? (i.e. which types of folders are not
searched.)

Might explain a few things this end.

Thanks.


Odie
 
Odie said:
John,

Do you have more info on this? (i.e. which types of folders are not
searched.)

Might explain a few things this end.
Click to expand...

I've never researched it systematically, just had Search fail to find things
that I knew with certainty were there. I've seen similar comments from
others, so it's not just me.

There's one well known problem with full text searches--see
<http://www.attention-to-details.com/newslog/39f-make-windows-xp-search-find-your-files.asp>
for example--but there seem to be other limitations as well that are less
well documented.
 
Odds are that you accidentally dragged it into another folder--this is one
of the most annoying things about Windows--it lets you do this without
warning.
Click to expand...
Yes I wondered about that one: I had noticed that particualrly when
batteries are low on a cordless mouse, the movement of things on the screen
can be affected by what the mouse is doing rather than what the user is
trying to do (hence a lot of YOU CANT MOVE THIS DIRECTORY error messages
when I am not trying to move a directory. But I thought tht stopped when I
changed to a Logitech mouse rather than a free giveaway one which chews up
batteries very quickly indeed.

Do programs like AgentRansack do anything to alleviate the problem or would
it possibly not find this directory either?


Some folders are not searched by Windows Search even if you set
it to search hidden and system folders, so you might have to hunt for it
manually.
Click to expand...
Failing that, it is possible that your directory structure has been
corrupted.
Click to expand...
There is no other indicatoin of that whatsoever??
 
news.rcn.com said:
Yes I wondered about that one: I had noticed that particualrly when
batteries are low on a cordless mouse, the movement of things on the
screen can be affected by what the mouse is doing rather than what the
user is trying to do (hence a lot of YOU CANT MOVE THIS DIRECTORY error
messages
when I am not trying to move a directory. But I thought tht stopped when
I changed to a Logitech mouse rather than a free giveaway one which chews
up batteries very quickly indeed.

Do programs like AgentRansack do anything to alleviate the problem or
would it possibly not find this directory either?
Click to expand...

Near as I can tell AgentRansack does a plain old fashioned "drill down
through the directory tree" search, so it _should_ find everything.
Some folders are not searched by Windows Search even if you set

There is no other indicatoin of that whatsoever??
Click to expand...

Depends on the nature of the corruption.
 
Depends on the nature of the corruption.
Well Agent Ransack found 36 files including something over nine megabytes
called 63844720.dbf in the d: root when Windows search found nothing at all

But still no directory and none of the few hundred files which were in that
directory.

Any way I can look into this question of corruption, whether and how it
occurred, what it was, (whether I can do anything about it)?
 
news.rcn.com said:
Well Agent Ransack found 36 files including something over nine megabytes
called 63844720.dbf in the d: root when Windows search found nothing at all

But still no directory and none of the few hundred files which were in that
directory.

Any way I can look into this question of corruption, whether and how it
occurred, what it was, (whether I can do anything about it)?
Click to expand...

Scandisk or chkdsk, depending on your OS.
 
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