the weirdest harddrive/ripping problem ive ever seen

[ted demen]

i dont know how this happened, or if it means the harddrive is as good as garbage, but...

i bought season 2 of Lost and right away started ripping/backing it up so that the originals dont get scratched.

everything seemed to work ok i guess (although i couldnt just use shrink like with the first season, so i used ripitforme) and the other strange thing is that the burned disks wil not play on my hp laptop with vista (although they play on my desktop with win-xp) but that is not the issue im asking about.

the really strange and weird thing that happened is that somehow, the ripping process destroyed almost all of my avi files on the same hard-drive. (i had some movies, documentaries, and episodes of shows which i converted to avi previously, and now when i try to play those i have 20 minute versions of LOST!) ?!?!?!?!?!?!

can someone make sense of any of this?

thanx

[Baldrick]

Try first play the avis with another video player, try vlc media player (it has it own codecs).

[ted demen]

vlc is my primary player already.

this is not some issue with misdirecting browser, which i also originally thought it was.

95% of al my avi movies and documentaries have somehow been converted to random 20 minute clips of Lost-season 2.

i even burned some of the AVI movies and played on another computer.... they are all LOST (no pun intended)

luckily almost all of those avi moveis have been backed up previously on dvdr so i havent permanantly lost too much data....
my primary concern is if i can trust this hard drive for future use, or should i just throw it out

[Ai Haibara]

Run Windows' Scandisc on the drive. It sounds like it might be a crosslinked file problem.

Since you're apparently using XP, I believe the normal way to do that (I'm not on my XP system at the moment ) is to find the drive in Explorer, right-click on it and select Properties. Then, in the Tools tab of the window that pops up, choose to 'Scan this drive for errors.'

I think you may also be able to use Start > Run > type 'scandskw <drive letter>' in the command-line box, without the quotes (and replace <drive letter> with the drive's letter (C:, D:, etc.) Haven't tried it, though.

[jameshgross]

Trting to figure out why may not prove useful.
A rule of thumb is NEVER rip to an archieve type directory.
Always rip to a temp dir then when everything looks good move the files to the directory where you store your files.
That said one of the main causes of file damage is an overly fragmented disk.
So defrag oftem usually when the disk is more then 10% fragmented.

[IKnowNothing]

Windoze XP doesn't have scandisk - it still uses Checkdisk!

I would suggest the following command
chkdsk /F /X <drive letter>
either in a command window or at Start/Run

/F will allow the fixing of errors
/X will unmount the disk - essentially kill all disk access while chkdsk runs making sure the indexes are clean
<drive letter> is the problematic drive c: d: or whatever.

BE WARNED that the damage may have already been done and all this will do is stop it getting worse and it can take a long time to run especially if the disk has to be reindexed.

It certainly sounds like cross linked files which is sometimes recoverable depending what else you've done and if the data has been overwritten

If you can backup the disk (as is) before trying any recovery/correction - then at least you can get back to what you have now rather than bin everything

[Seeker47]

Trting to figure out why may not prove useful.
A rule of thumb is NEVER rip to an archieve type directory.
Always rip to a temp dir then when everything looks good move the files to the directory where you store your files.
That said one of the main causes of file damage is an overly fragmented disk.
So defrag oftem usually when the disk is more then 10% fragmented.

One thing that is totally insane, yet you see it over and over again in the clueless Windoze world is the "everything on one gigantic C: scenario." That's gonna bite you in the ass, sooner or later. (While it may seem more convenient too, it's actually less.) A separate directory (folder) really is not sufficient. If it's not feasible to give your video (or audio) work over to its own hard drive, at least give it its own partition. And on that partition, make judicious use of TEMP directories for output or transitional files.

[jameshgross]

Seeker47,
Lets assume that in the clueless "WINDOZE World" that adding a second HD is beyond the ability of most computer owners.
I have given up trying to explain why a large HD should be partitioned. I go for safe practices that are easy and simple.
But your right multiple HD is the best way to go.

[ted demen]

ok thanx, i will give checkdisk a try, and post resutls.

(IKnowNothing) when you said try:
chkdsk /F /X <drive letter>
do i have to put the drive letter in between those two symbols? so as in:
chkdsk /F /X <H>


and Seeker47, maybe you are also one of those "clueless windoze world" that you mention because you assume that everyone has "everything on one gigantic C: scenario"
i personally have two drives (system and data) and the problems occured on the data drive

[Nelson37]

Ted - the chkdsk will run best before booting on the C:, can be run on D: with windows up but still best to select task and run at next boot.

Did these files have generic names or specific and not randomly-generated?

Personally, I dislike partitioning drives. While this can reduce oversize directory issues, it does not eliminate them which a little simple management can. I have seen far more cases of severe data loss due to a failure of partition structure than OS file mis-management. It is a much more low-level structure; you want your foundation to be as simple and rock-solid as possible.

Defrag and chkdsk should be run regularly, both for performance benefits as well as to give warning of imminent failures, and prevent many.

You most likely are thoroughly screwed on the lost AVI files, if the drive test out OK I would copy off the good Lost files and re-partition and format. That would be an excellent time for a thorough surface testing. Drive should be closely monitored for additional errors.

[ted demen]

Did these files have generic names or specific and not randomly-generated?

no they were custom/specific names of movies and or documentaries.

and i ran chkdsk, and it did its thing and then nothing happened (assuming it didnt find any errors)

like i said before, almost all the data that was overwritten by "lost - season 2" i already had backed up so its not a big deal (although it could have been i guess if i didnt have it backed on dvdr)

my only concern is if i can trust this drive with future data that may or may-not be backed up.

[hudsonf]

I had a drive that was doing the same thing with DVDShrink. Every time I used DVDShrink to backup a dvd to this drive my other videos would get mixed together. The drive finally died on me a month or two later.

[ted demen]

I had a drive that was doing the same thing with DVDShrink. Every time I used DVDShrink to backup a dvd to this drive my other videos would get mixed together. The drive finally died on me a month or two later.

interesting, cause i was also using shrink to back up lost season 2, but since it only worked for a couple of the disks, i ended up doing the rest with ripit4me.

but that definately rings alarm bells for me since i was suspicious of this drives stability, and you have just enforced my suspicions.