File system corruption after power supply failure?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jay
  • Start date Start date
J

Jay

One of my older computer's power supply failed yesterday. The unit was
replaced and the computer started up fine. However...

Some files on the secondary hard drive will not open. I get error messages
about corrupt file, invalid file format, unknown extension for random
files - .txt, .doc, .avi, .divx, .htm, .mht....... This is only for files
stored on that hard drive. The only file type that would refuse to open at
all is .wmv files. For any other it is random - some open some don't.

Chkdsk, adaware, spybot, sfc, antivirus checks were done but nothing was
found. Even the drive diagnostic (western Digital) indicated the drive is
physically fine. The drive was temporarily removed and installed on another
computer - same problem.

The system drive works perfectly - all application open fine and all files
on it work.

I am perplexed - everyting was fine till the power supply failure.

I would really appreciate any pointers on how to address this situation.
Thanks in advance.

Jay
 
Jay said:
One of my older computer's power supply failed yesterday. The unit was
replaced and the computer started up fine. However...

Some files on the secondary hard drive will not open. I get error messages
about corrupt file, invalid file format, unknown extension for random
files - .txt, .doc, .avi, .divx, .htm, .mht....... This is only for files
stored on that hard drive. The only file type that would refuse to open at
all is .wmv files. For any other it is random - some open some don't.

Chkdsk, adaware, spybot, sfc, antivirus checks were done but nothing was
found. Even the drive diagnostic (western Digital) indicated the drive is
physically fine. The drive was temporarily removed and installed on
another
computer - same problem.

The system drive works perfectly - all application open fine and all files
on it work.

I am perplexed - everyting was fine till the power supply failure.

I would really appreciate any pointers on how to address this situation.
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Restore from your latest backup.

Kerry
 
Given that you had the same result putting the drive in another machine,
clearly there is data corruption. Running the WD diagnostic was a good
idea. I suggest running chkdsk /r also, if you didn't use that option.

There aren't a lot of options. If the files are important to you, you could
try a data recovery product. I've had good results with
Active@ File Recovery for Windows http://www.file-recovery.net/ which is
reasonably priced. The only complete protection against this sort of thing
is backup.
 
Thanks for the suggestion. Actually there is no problem with the Windows
system itself - at least on the system drive. It is accessing some files on
the second hard drive that is the problem!

Jay


: : > One of my older computer's power supply failed yesterday. The unit was
: > replaced and the computer started up fine. However...
: >
: > Some files on the secondary hard drive will not open. I get error
messages
: > about corrupt file, invalid file format, unknown extension for random
: > files - .txt, .doc, .avi, .divx, .htm, .mht....... This is only for
files
: > stored on that hard drive. The only file type that would refuse to open
at
: > all is .wmv files. For any other it is random - some open some don't.
: >
: > Chkdsk, adaware, spybot, sfc, antivirus checks were done but nothing was
: > found. Even the drive diagnostic (western Digital) indicated the drive
is
: > physically fine. The drive was temporarily removed and installed on
: > another
: > computer - same problem.
: >
: > The system drive works perfectly - all application open fine and all
files
: > on it work.
: >
: > I am perplexed - everyting was fine till the power supply failure.
: >
: > I would really appreciate any pointers on how to address this situation.
: > Thanks in advance.
: >
:
: Restore from your latest backup.
:
: Kerry
:
:
 
Thanks for the suggestion - I shall be downloading the demo shortly.

I will be trying out the chkdsk /r option too later this afternoon.

In the meantime I tries out what something someone advised me locally - copy
the files on to a freshly formatted drive. Which I did - copied on to a
spare drive connected through USB2.0.

Cannot explain why - but it worked for quite a few of the files previously
un-openable! Some still remain corrupted or something.

Jay



"GTS" <x> wrote in message : Given that you had the same result putting the drive in another machine,
: clearly there is data corruption. Running the WD diagnostic was a good
: idea. I suggest running chkdsk /r also, if you didn't use that option.
:
: There aren't a lot of options. If the files are important to you, you
could
: try a data recovery product. I've had good results with
: Active@ File Recovery for Windows http://www.file-recovery.net/ which is
: reasonably priced. The only complete protection against this sort of
thing
: is backup.
: --
:
: : > One of my older computer's power supply failed yesterday. The unit was
: > replaced and the computer started up fine. However...
: >
: > Some files on the secondary hard drive will not open. I get error
messages
: > about corrupt file, invalid file format, unknown extension for random
: > files - .txt, .doc, .avi, .divx, .htm, .mht....... This is only for
files
: > stored on that hard drive. The only file type that would refuse to open
at
: > all is .wmv files. For any other it is random - some open some don't.
: >
: > Chkdsk, adaware, spybot, sfc, antivirus checks were done but nothing was
: > found. Even the drive diagnostic (western Digital) indicated the drive
is
: > physically fine. The drive was temporarily removed and installed on
: > another
: > computer - same problem.
: >
: > The system drive works perfectly - all application open fine and all
files
: > on it work.
: >
: > I am perplexed - everyting was fine till the power supply failure.
: >
: > I would really appreciate any pointers on how to address this situation.
: > Thanks in advance.
: >
: > Jay
: >
: >
: >
: >
: >
:
:
 
Jay said:
Thanks for the suggestion. Actually there is no problem with the Windows
system itself - at least on the system drive. It is accessing some files
on
the second hard drive that is the problem!

Jay
Click to expand...

When the power supply failed it sounds like some of the files on the second
drive got corrupted. If you have a backup of those files then restore the
backup. If you don't then in all liklihood they are not usable any more.

Kerry
 
Depending on what type of failure, if the power supply shorted out, it could
have affected the hard drives. Unfortunrately, it seem that your second
drive may have gotten a "relayted" problem. (I've seen power voltage spikes
that fried the hard drive which also fried the hard drive electronics).
 
Your finding on the copy is interesting. It leads me to suspect that the
drive may have some marginally bad sectors. The Operating System will retry
several times when it encounters a read error. Some application programs
might fail the operation on one try to open a file. I'm not sure, but
that's one theory on why the copy worked when other things fail. It should
be interesting to see if the bad sector check turns up anything.
--
 
The hard drive now is not accessible at all!

On advice (from the same guy who told me to copy all the files) - I have
removed the drive from the computer and substituted it with the spare drive
used the copy its contents to.

On examining the copied files I discovered that roughly 80 document files
are not accessible. I am discounting the inaccessible multimedia and backup
software files which can be recreated from the sources later.

The 250GB unit was reported by both Windows and the WD Diagnostic utility as
137GB now, prior to removal. As luck would have it, its warranty expired not
more than a month ago.

Thanks for all the extremely informative suggestions wherein I learnt quite
a few things. And consider myself lucky that I took the unusual suggestion
in copying the drive contents!

Just to make sure I ran chkdsk /r on both system and the newly installed
secondary drives. Weekly optical media Ghost backups are done on the system
drive routinely. I am creating optical media backups of all the contents of
the second hard drive too now!

The crashed drive will be taken to a data recovery place next month to try
to recover some of the documents that are, unfortunately, irreplaceable or
cannot be recreated.

Regards and thanks again for all your kind involvement!

Jay




: One of my older computer's power supply failed yesterday. The unit was
: replaced and the computer started up fine. However...
:
: Some files on the secondary hard drive will not open. I get error messages
: about corrupt file, invalid file format, unknown extension for random
: files - .txt, .doc, .avi, .divx, .htm, .mht....... This is only for files
: stored on that hard drive. The only file type that would refuse to open at
: all is .wmv files. For any other it is random - some open some don't.
:
: Chkdsk, adaware, spybot, sfc, antivirus checks were done but nothing was
: found. Even the drive diagnostic (western Digital) indicated the drive is
: physically fine. The drive was temporarily removed and installed on
another
: computer - same problem.
:
: The system drive works perfectly - all application open fine and all files
: on it work.
:
: I am perplexed - everyting was fine till the power supply failure.
:
: I would really appreciate any pointers on how to address this situation.
: Thanks in advance.
:
: Jay
:
:
:
:
:
 
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