defragmenting wiped out audio and unformatted disc

[msog]

Please help,

Last night I defragmented my audio drive and this morning I looked at the report and closed the defragmenter. I then opened PTLE 6.1.1 (win xp home) and to my horror everything on my audio drive was gone. In fact it wasn't even formatted any longer. Drive name had changed to "local drive D. I tried the system restore but only system was restored not the audio drive. Has this happened to anyone else? Does it sound like a virus worm or something...is there anything I can do but cry and start over? Obviously, any help would be appreciated.

thanks,

[Electrohermit]

I would suggest that you go and look at the defrag program and check the settings. You need to find out why it cleared data, if you only meant to defrag. Do some detective work.
Another thing is that the audio file may still exist physically on the hard drive, but perhaps the file-tree area got scrambled. In other words, the section of the drive that lists where all the fragments are, may have gotten rewritten somehow. I know there are companies that work on discs, but I wonder if they can bring up the old file-tree.

I would not do anything else until you consult with an expert. As I said, the data may be there.
I wonder if your PC has a system restore that you could revert back to. This is something beyond the DUC I think, you need PROs.

[Electrohermit]

sorry, I missed above that you tried the system restore.

[Roy Howell]

msog,
What happened about this?...any luck getting the files back yet?

[Electrohermit]

msog??? are you there son??? just click your handset if you can here me .....??? put the gun down.....

[rchaffin]

Dude!

I feel your pain! The same thing happened to me back in February. I was working on a high profile DVD soundtrack project due in 2 weeks. I was getting errors on my DAE, and had never defragged the system drive in the 2 years I've owned it. So....I proceeded to do so! In my horror the next day, I found I had lost a few of the audio files and was still getting DAE errors. To make a long story short, I eventually had to replace the system drive.(Recomended by my computer tech) Thankfully, after 2 weekes of anxiety and nail biting, I still made my deadline. I hope you don't have to go through all I did. Good luck in your quest! Please post your final resolution to the DUC.

Good Luck!

[ROME]

I had the same thing happen a couple weeks ago for the first time in my life - and it sucked royally. Luckily I had my music files backed up, but I lost a couple gigabytes worth of family photos and other data.

My crash occurred when I tried to defrag my hard drive without first checking the drive for errors. I began the defrag, went to watch Lord ofthe Rings - Part III, and reentered the studio after the movie to find the little DOS train tracks running across the borttom of a black screen!

I had a technician walk me through the standard repair process. During that, I was lucky enough to get a DOS prompt which told me there was a corrupted file "WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM". This was obviously a major operations file.

I attempted a repair using the original Windows XP startup disk. The test resulted in "Test completed with read element failure" & "Too many errors found".

I had to purchase a second hard drive so that I could reinstall Windows XP and get the computer up and running again. Once I got back up and running, I found that my computer would recognize the original drive (as Drive D), but it would not let me open or access the drive. When I checked "Properties" in that drive, it showed that the drive had 0 bytes in use, and 0 bytes available. Basically it wasn't able to access the drive beyond simply recognizing that it was hooked up. Windows of course kept saying "This disk must be reformatted. Reformat now?" I probably don't have to tell you that you'll lose all hope of recovering your music data if you do this.

I transferred my backed-up files from my external VST 80-gig disk onto the new drive and got back to buisiness. I now do a complete back-up at the end of each day's work including any songs I've modified that day. Loosing even eight hours of original work can be a catasprophic event!

I've been told that there are specialists that can go into the hard drive and repair the errors one at a time for a hefty fee. I had my music files backed up, so it's not a major priority for me right now to try and determine whether my photo files can be ressurrected from the bad disk. I do plan to give it a try by the Fall, and when I do I'll come back here and post my results.

Whatever you do, DON'T reformat the damaged disk when prompted to do so, that is if you want to have a shot at recovering the data!

[Electrohermit]

I think MSOG killed himself. He probably feels like doing that....

I got really nervous the other day about having all of my sessions on one hard drive, so I copied everything over to my C drive, since I have 2 big drives in my PC. Im also going to make backup DVDs and keep them in the house. Defragging is risky business and I would recommend to folks to make a totally seperate backup before Defragging, its just too damn scarey! BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP.

[Electrohermit]

Rchafin, ROME

guys, reading your stories (especially yours rome) was like reading about Hannibal Lector dissecting, truly grizzly!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ROME, I could hardly get through your story.............I think Id rather be shot in the head. I was squirming in my chair. We should ALL buy an extra 80 Gig internal and just copy all of our stuff over, too risky

[Nicolaim]

what program(s) do you use for defrag?