Hey all, I turned on my MyBook this morning and found that two
important folders were completely empty. When I doubleclick on one of
them, the cursor changes into the hourglass as if it's going to pull
up my files, but then it shows an empty folder. Is there anything I
can do to retrieve my files? I'm running XP Home.
By MyBook, I presume you mean an external drive.
I suspect, due to the delay, you have got a failed sector within the
directory structure. It is also possible that some kind of deletion
has taken place. The good news, is that it is very likely your
original data is still there and can be recovered. In these
situations, you will need either a recovery service, or recovery
software.
Points I would advise on is to not change ANYTHING on the problem
drive. Any attempt to write a file to that drive can overwrite your
files and directories, and overwritten sectors cannot be recovered.
Second point is that the drive may be failing, and so you should make
a sector copy, or image copy ASAP. For an image copy you may require
a second drive it your MyBook is larger than free space on your C:
drive. Sector copy, you will need a second drive anyway.
There are many software recovery programs available. If your drive is
still FAT32, you will want one that takes care of the fact that if a
file is deleted on FAT32 that part of the cluster location is also
lost. NTFS is more tolerant, but I think most MyBook drives are
shipped as FAT32.
Good luck
Michael
www.cnwrecovery.com