Hans-Christian Andersen
hans.andersen at phulse.com
Fri Apr 27 22:15:24 CDT 2012
I honestly still don't believe it's a hard drive failure, because of the way the way NTFS structures your partition and file table etc. You wouldn't see files magically missing. If it were that your hard drive was failing, you'd probably still see those files/directories, although opening them would throw an error or the OS would lock up trying to access them. It could be some other component of your computer is failing, such as the IDE/SATA controller, but such an event would more likely mean your system can't boot at all. You haven't mentioned any other oddities such as loud clicking noises, slowness or other such weird behaviour, so I still think it is more likely to be a software failure. This is the software I used to recover my damaged drive and it was a complete success. http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm It's not free and I dislike their policy of only allowing the registration code to be used a set number of times (make sure you install it under the administrator account on Windows!), but it did the job well and I had no problems with garbled file names or any such thing. Let us know what the conclusion to your issue is, as this is an interesting case. - Hans Sent from my iPhone On 2012-04-27, at 7:31 PM, "Jim Lawrence" <accessd at shaw.ca> wrote: > Hi Darryl: > > It seems doubtful that it was a viral type attack that ravished your system. > Even virus attacks will follow some sort of logical pattern. Now a days the > most powerful malware just attempts gain control of your system or capture > some importance personal data. > > It would seem you are having a bit of hardware failure. Most times the > problems are related to hard drive failure but it can just as well be hard > drive control or even a motherboard failures. These type of issues are > usually initiated by local electrically problems, low power, lightning > storms and so on...learned from experience. Using a quality UPS/surge > protector can not be over-stated. > > IOW, your hardware is most likely failing and it might be a good time to > replace some or all of your computer equipment before re-installing the > software and data. (There are a number of free and open source pieces of > hardware checking software out there if you wish to narrow down the > problem.) > > HTH > Jim > > -----Original Message----- > From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Darryl Collins > Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 4:25 PM > To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving > Subject: Re: [AccessD] Strange happenings (Rather OT,but Advice is > appreciated) > > Well, the story so far, between having a decent backup on a portable drive > (of my documents and files at least), file recovery software and a few other > nuts and bolt I have managed to get the PC back to close to the original > condition. Lost the bookmarks from Mozilla, stored passwords and other > profile info - my fault for not backing that up - but in the scheme of > things it all recoverable over time, beside, the bookmark list was getting > out of hand and needed a clean up anyway :) > > I have run some full disk scans and tests, full virus and rootkit scans as > well. Nothing has come up on those. > > For the moment I am going to update the scope (a few more app data files and > the mozilla profiles for example) and frequency of the backups from this PC > from weekly to daily. If I get a repeat performance of this I will > completely wipe the drive and see what happens. > > Right now I am just thankful that I am experienced and patient enough to > take regular backups of my data - Seriously, if I had not I would have lost > pretty much all my personal files in this instance. The software recovery > is useful, but it cannot get back all the files intact - plenty of them were > just shells with corrupt data in them. > > > > > > Darryl Collins > Whittle Consulting Pty Ltd > Suite 8, 660 Canterbury Rd > Surrey Hills, VIC, 3127 > > p: +61 3 9898 3242 > m: +61 418 381 548 > f: +61 3 9898 1855 > e: darryl at whittleconsulting.com.au > w: www.whittleconsulting.com.au > > ________________________________________ > From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com > [accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] on behalf of Darryl Collins > [darryl at whittleconsulting.com.au] > Sent: Wednesday, 25 April 2012 10:28 AM > To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving > Subject: [AccessD] Strange happenings (Rather OT, but Advice is appreciated) > > (xposted with Excel-L) > > Wow... > > I have a trusty HP desktop, which has worked flawlessly for about 4 years > now out of the box. This machine is on for most of the day and night, most > days and nights. > > It is basically the family PC in the lounge room. Last night I was at home > listening to music on iTunes thru the headphones when I noticed some of the > tracks in the list started to flag themselves as unavailable - What the??? > > Went to the desktop so I could check the folder and stacks of Icons are now > missing, - there were there not 10 mins ago. I check the folders - stacks of > files were missing. > > I immediately shut down the whole system, rebooted and the icons and files > were still missing. Ran a system restore which got back the programs and > their icons, but gobs of data had been deleted. > > Luckily I have pretty good backups of my data, and I have also found some > software that seems to be able to restore most (if not all of the) deleted > data from the existing drive. > > My question is WTF happened. It was almost like one of those virus's from > the mid 90's that kids used to write - You know "Delete all jpgs and mp3". > > Actually it was wiping a whole stack of stuff. > > I am pretty tempted to wipe the drive and reinstall from scratch. First I > will see if I can recover the system. > It is weird. Bookmarks from the brower, shortcut buttons etc were also all > wiped. > > Never seen anything like it... > Anyone got any suggestions? > > Cheers > Darryl. > > -- > AccessD mailing list > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > > > -- > AccessD mailing list > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > -- > AccessD mailing list > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com