# [SOLVED] XP NTFS E:\ file or directory is corrupted; unreadable



## Bobby8Pints (Mar 2, 2008)

The hardware is Maxtor 91021U2 20GB HDD, and the Maxtor Powermax vrsn 4.23 utilities report that the physical drive & MBR are OK.

However, when activate "My Computer" and double click the drive E: icon the failure message appears:-

E:\ is not accessible
The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable

It appears that the Master File Table might differ from the File Record Segment entries.

How can I confirm this, and how can the problem be rectified?

Any suggestions gratefully received

Bob


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

*Re: XP NTFS E:\ file or directory is corrupted & unreadable*

run
chkdsk /r


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## Bobby8Pints (Mar 2, 2008)

*Re: XP NTFS E:\ file or directory is corrupted & unreadable*

Many thanx for your assistance Dai.

When I performed CHKDSK E: /r the following response was displayed:-

The type of the file system is NTFS.
Unable to determine volume version and state. CHKDSK aborted.

What would you advise next?

Bob


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

*Re: XP NTFS E:\ file or directory is corrupted & unreadable*

see if these switches help
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314835


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## Bobby8Pints (Mar 2, 2008)

*Re: XP NTFS E:\ file or directory is corrupted & unreadable*

Identical Chkdsk error message encountered for /c, /f, /i and /r switches as identified above.

I think what I need is a utility program that can display the MBR, BPB, MFT & FRS tables associated with the primary and mirror records to ascertain the extent of the corruption.

Does anyone know of any such utilities?

Bob


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

*Re: XP NTFS E:\ file or directory is corrupted & unreadable*

i have pm'd someone else to have a look at the problem


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## Deleted090308 (Jan 25, 2007)

*Re: XP NTFS E:\ file or directory is corrupted & unreadable*

Hi,

How was the E: drive created/formatted? What OS/program?

You can use *TestDisk* to examine the drive and rectify errors.

I would start looking at the boot sector(s).


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## Bobby8Pints (Mar 2, 2008)

*Re: XP NTFS E:\ file or directory is corrupted & unreadable*

Hi eneles,

Thanks for your help.

The drive was formatted by the Windows XP installation software.

Some time later it would not reboot so I purchased a larger HDD and configured the old drive as E: and all was well for a number of months.

It was used to hold WAV & NWC sound/music files, some of which were compressed into ZIP files. Fortunately I had also backed up many, though not all files onto a networked drive.

It was only recently that I discovered the E: drive had become inaccessible.

What the TestDisk utility demonstates is that the MFT and its mirror are completely different, I suspect because their addresses in the NTFS Bios Parameter Block have been overwritten by garbage.

Interestingly, the Photorec utility attempted to recover one file that was intercepted by my AV software. It reported that W32.Etap.gen was detected which could well have been the cause of the original boot problem.

I am now satisfied that the physical hardware can be reformatted and reused as further back up storage.

Again many thanks for your support and assistance.

Bob


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## Deleted090308 (Jan 25, 2007)

*Re: XP NTFS E:\ file or directory is corrupted & unreadable*

Well, as you probably have guessed - the drive is infected.

I suggest you start a thread *here* to get help.


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## Bobby8Pints (Mar 2, 2008)

*Re: XP NTFS E:\ file or directory is corrupted & unreadable*

Downloaded Maxtor MaxBlaster & created loadable CD containing utilities.

Then successfully formatted drive by re-initialising the disk using MaxBlaster.

Issue now resolved - suggest you now close this thread.

Many thanks for your help.

Bob


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## Deleted090308 (Jan 25, 2007)

*Re: XP NTFS E:\ file or directory is corrupted & unreadable*

OK. Hope you didn't lose important data.


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