Hard drive opens, but files are unusable

Any ideas?

Which drive has the unreadable files? If "safely remove" is saying files are open you can power the machine down and them disconnect the external drive.

Re: [SOLVED] Hard drive opens, but files are unusable

Can't find where to revoke the 'solved' label...

All the files appear to be working now on both internal and external hard drives. The problem seems to be that I can't move/copy files onto the external drives. Also, I'm unable to stop it at times when it's clear nothing from it is open. The external hasn't had any problems before. They all started as I mentioned above.

Re: [SOLVED] Hard drive opens, but files are unusable

9xk3j

So is my hard drive permanently messed up or will it be fixed if I reformat it?

If you don't need the data on the drive you may want to run check disk (chkdsk /r) and see if anything changes. I would also suggest running a drive diagnostic program to see if any errors are returned. The manufacturer of the drive will have one you can download.

I do need the data. I've been able to move some files off of the hard drive. On the other hand, I can't even access some folders. I get an error saying the folder isn't accessible because of an I/O device error. For some reason, I now can't access the files I was able to move off the external earlier. When attempting to move anything off the external, a 'preparing to copy' dialogue box pops up and indicates it's trying and failing to discover any items.

Edit: Ok, some folders will open, but they take much longer than they used to.

Sounds like the drive is just getting read to fail. Get whatever you can get off the drive as soon as possible.

Yes, I think you're right. Turns out it's under warantee so I'll be able to get it replaced. I want to wipe all traces of the files before I send it in though. The Disc Wizard program they recommended to do that with wasn't able to detect the hard drive (my computer still detects the hard drive). Is there another way I can wipe the hard drive clean or should I just trust the company won't be looking at any of the files?

You can try Active Kill Disk or DBAN, either one should work fine if they can detect the drive.

Active Kill Disk was able to find the external, but remained at 0% while trying to erase all data. DBAN had an unfriendly user interface that I wasn't about to learn. I'll just send the hard drive to Seagate and hope for the best. Thanks for your help.

DBAN is actually quite easy. Just make sure the drive is the ONLY drive in the computer boot the computer with the DBAN CD then at the prompt type quick that will write all zeros to all sectors on the drive. The ability of any program to wipe the drive at this point may be a problem due to the drives condition