# Corrupted Folder on External Hard Drive



## OrcinusDrake (Jun 13, 2014)

The video folder on my external hard drive (not sure exactly what it is, samsung, s2 portable 1TB, I ran a conversion from FAT32 to NTFS the other day) looks like it's been corrupted. It disappeared from the folder browser on my tv the other day and plugging it into my computer results in an error when attempting to open the folder:
"
Location is not available
J:\Videos is not accessible.
The directory name is invalid.
OK
"

Right click-properties says the folder is 0 bytes, but I know that it contains on the order of 550 GB. No specific file in this folder is especially valuable, but the whole thing has taken many years to accumulate and would be an absolute pain if I can't recover anything. Win8.1's Chkdsk didn't fix the issue.

I haven't really dealt with a corrupted file before, so I don't know what the deal is. If there's any simple way to recover some of the files from this folder I would much appreciate hearing it, otherwise, from a google search it looks like I'll also have need some help deleting it to free that space up again.


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

> I ran a conversion from FAT32 to NTFS


It was unwise of you to perform the conversion with (lots) of data on the disk and I'm not surprised that the largest folder is the one that gets messed up. Theoretically, filesystem conversion is supposed to be flawless, but ugly things have happened in practice. A disk check won't help much as you've observed. I believe the MFT (master file table) was not entirely successfully generated from the File Allocation Table (FAT) during the conversion, specifically entries for that folder, so basically it is an "orphaned" location.

Now, before attempting any other suggestions offered here or wherever, backup any important stuff to some other location (cloud or other HDD). Data recovery software may be able to recover the videos, perhaps from the "lost" FAT32 volume, but it's a matter of luck now. You will require another disk of at least the same capacity to recover data to.



> If there's any simple way to recover some of the files from this folder I would much appreciate hearing it


I don't know about simple, but there are lots of recovery programs to try out. Just remember to backup any important stuff before trying things on the drive. I would suggest TestDisk for a start, it's free software so you can go ahead and grab a copy from TestDisk Download - CGSecurity. Perform a Quick Search on the drive using TestDisk and see if the FAT32 volume is listed as a lost/deleted partition. To do this, run testdisk, choose to create a log, select the ext HDD, select the partition table type (Intel/MBR), select the Analyse option and perform the quick search. It will take some time to complete. After it's done searching, post a screenshot of testdisk showing the list of found partitions so we can have a look and advice further.



> from a google search it looks like I'll also have need some help deleting it to free that space up again.


That's true especially since the MFT entries for that folder (and its files) are erroneous because the deletion process in its simplest form only touches the MFT and not the actual data on their precise location, that's why it is possible to recover deleted data, unless you permanently overwrite (shred) the data with some other program. I can see that disk space usage for the HDD accounts for the Video folder as well, but the folder itself is reported as an inaccessible location with zero disk space usage, so that will most likely cause problems with any file operations including renaming and deletion. I'm afraid you'll have to format this disk to fix its filesystem issues BUT AFTER all recoverable data has been backed up elsewhere. You'll need at least 612GB free space on some other location(s) assuming you manage to recover all of the videos, but start with copying any important accessible data off that drive to a backup location, then we can attempt recovering your videos.


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## OrcinusDrake (Jun 13, 2014)




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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

Now type* P* to list the files. If it list the files you want you can choose to recover them to another HDD.


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

To add on spunk.funk's directive, you can navigate into the _Video_ folder and see if the files are listed. If they aren't, it's time to try other data recovery software. TestDisk is capable of rebuilding File Allocation Table for FAT(32) filesystem, but it cannot rebuild MFT for NTFS from scratch, it can only restore from MFT's backup. Let us know if TestDisk lists any files inside the Video folder before we can move forward.

As for the screenshot, I find it strange that the listed partition is a logical volume and not a primary partition (note the letter L at the beginning of the green line). Did you by any chance change the partition's characteristics by pressing left/right arrow keys? If so, DO NOT write the changes to disk; TestDisk will give an option to *quit* back to its main menu or to *write* to disk. Whatever you do, do not write any changes to disk, even though you could revert the changes, it's best to play safe.


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