As many of you know I've been upgrading my old systems, rearranging my network and basically enhancing my overall home computing experience. Well, I ran into a major setback last week.
First of all I've had a sporadic problem with my old Dell for quite a while now. Every time I open it up I'm not sure if it's going to boot or even power up after I put it back together. If it doesn't I open it back up, make sure everything is plugged in tight and try again and it usually works, even though I made sure everything was tight before I closed it up. Once it works it's good to go and I don't ever experience any other problems until I open it up again, then the guessing game begins again.
Next, I was moving document folder targets on all my machines last week, moving the XP My Documents targets to my storage drives where my documnets are actually stored. While doing so I said yes to moving all previously stored documents to the new folders for each machine even though there weren't any that I was aware of. Keep in mind for future reference that my old Dell has a 98SE/XP dual boot.
I had already copied everything off my laptop (NTSF) and my old external backup drive (Fat32) to the Dell's storage drive (Fat32 as are all the drives attached to the Dell... everything on both other machines are NTSF). I spent several hours consolidating and arranging data on the Dell storage drive to create what amounted to a master data repository. All seemed to go well.
A few days later I replaced a failing CD ROM drive on the Dell with a new DVD ROM burner. When I hit the power switch everything powered up as though it was going to BIOS but it never did. I powered back down, opened it up, wiggled wires and made sure everything was tight and tried again. Same thing. I repeated the process and finally success. It went to BIOS and started to boot. Now this was a little strange as in the past it either wouldn't power at all, or it would boot normally.
At this point I decided to check Win98 and hit the keys to boot to 98SE. When I got there I looked at the storage drive and half my files had cryptic names that weren't recognizable and, of course, wouldn't open. In the interim I tested the new DVD burner after downloading freeware burner software and it worked fine. I'm not sure why but I ended up shutting down and restarting in Win98 again. As I did it went into scan disc, then bagan a full surface scan of my storage drive which I aborted. Upon re-entry into 98 nothing had changed except that the DVD burner software I had just downloaded had totally dissapeared from my storage drive (it didn't need to be "installed" to run).
I powered back down then booted to XP. XP was showing the same results; cryptic file names on half my files and unable to open them. I shut down and rebooted to XP and a DOS window popped up saying that my file system was inconsistant and it needed to repair it. I let it run and when I got into XP all those cryptic files were gone entirely. At this point both XP and 98 boot normally and both show the same files in the same locations on the storage drive.
I was curious if there was consistancy in the "lost" files being from my laptop, Dell or old external storage drive and, while the losses apprear random, they lean toward the laptop and storage drives although some of the original Dell storage drive files were also lost. This particular drive has been in use in my Dell, then my new machine and now back into my Dell and recently tested error free so I don't think the issue is the drive itself. I'm thinking it has something to do with either moving that documents target in XP while copying the XP files over (whatever they might have been) or the power on inability to reach the BIOS after the DVD burner install but not sure which.
Yesterday I downloaded a program called GetDataBack for Fat32 (they also make a version for NTSF) and ran it. It found all the lost files and I could open every one of them from within the program but, of course, they want $80 to register the program and actually recover the files.
I'm debating this as none of the lost files are particullarily valuable and I probably have disc back-ups of most of them but it would be nice to have them back. What I'm really wondering about is the root cause of the file system corruption so I can avoid a repeat. Any ideas?
