External Hard Drive now showing just one stinking file

[At Large]

I had recently back up my entire CD collection to my external hard drive. I was in the process of renaming mp3s that I didn't rip myself (I was only to the D's) when I came in this morning (I keep it at work during the week), opened up the external hard drive folder and noticed instead of my main folders, I see just one mp3 file staring back at me. The properties say that the drive is full, but no one's home. Any ideas?

My friend that does scripting work here says that it may be because I've unplugged it without safely removing it, which I've done a few times.

Any ideas here on what's wrong and if I can get it back?

[Rack Fu]

I just had my 300 GB Seagate external Drive shit the bed. Got an RMA for it today and will be sending that shit back, without all my files of course. I had about 45 days left on the 1 year warranty.

[frodo_biguns]

I had recently back up my entire CD collection to my external hard drive. I was in the process of renaming mp3s that I didn't rip myself (I was only to the D's) when I came in this morning (I keep it at work during the week), opened up the external hard drive folder and noticed instead of my main folders, I see just one mp3 file staring back at me. The properties say that the drive is full, but no one's home. Any ideas?

My friend that does scripting work here says that it may be because I've unplugged it without safely removing it, which I've done a few times.

Any ideas here on what's wrong and if I can get it back?

It's hard to know and pinpoint exactly what is wrong. When posting a thread and looking for help it's always good practice to list your software and hardware configuration. It could be something as simple as a jumper or a BIOS issue.

List the make and model of your Hard Drive. Also include your OS, MB I'll take a stab at it. :wink:

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

You are asking for trouble if you don't run that shitty Windows "Safely Remove Hardware"
piece of crap unmounter.

Windows handles USB controllers like fraudo handles fresh takes.

[ElTaco]

Before you panic, I would a scan disk on the disk. If that doesn't find anything, try an undelete software on it. Even if you don't pay for it, you should be able to check if it can find your files. See if this helps.

[At Large]

I ran a scandisk on my Maxtor Personal 5000L External Hard Drive. It took about 12 hours (no joke). When it was done, it said that it couldn't correct the errors on the drive and what I was left with was about 20 folders of music where there were over 500. So, I'm starting over. I reformated.

Thankfully, I had a portion of the collection backed up. It's the more recent stuff that I'm going to have to scrounge for.

So I'm rebacking up my collection again. This time, I'm back most of it up as .ogg files, which take up a little less room.

[frodo_biguns]

GetDataBack Data Recovery 2.31

http://www.download.com/GetDataBack-Dat ... 94180.html

Can we now put this under the solved category?

[ElTaco]

considering that he reformated his disk, it was solved way before you posted. Linux is actually a great recovery tool if you know what the hell you are doing.