Member Panel

I am running XP Pro with SP2. When doing a normal reboot yesterday, Windows told me that my secondary hard drive (storage of ISO;s of driver disks, my software backups etc etc) needed a check disk. After it ran, it said that there were numerous errors which it "fixed" The drive had been running just fine previously.
After the "Fix", all the files had disappeared. This is no great loss as everything was backed up, but any ideas's as to why this might have happened?

Thanks

Its possible that the files were sitting in bad/corrupt sectors of the disk. If this is the case then it normally backs the files up but changes the name and extension and puts it into directories e.g DIR0001 (used to in the old days)

You normally can't recover any of those files...

Thanks for the quick response, so other than a periodic scan disk (chkdsk) and backups not much to be done to prevent this in the future I take it?

PC maintenance is an on-going issue with any PC owner. There are loads of preventative things to do - specifically when it comes to file/hard drive integrity you can make sure that you defrag the drive on a regular basis, I personally defrag every week. You can also run periodic scandisk checks from within windows.

Make sure that you keep your Recycle bin emptied regularly (don't let it get too full!). Clean out your Temp internet and Temp windows files every week.

I regularly do all those things so guess it was just one of those things. thanks

Incidentally, what make of drive is it and how long have you had it from new?

Its a Western Digital, 7200 RPM, 120 Gig, about 2 years old or so