Windows 8 - everything deleted overnight on one drive. Why?

Dinarius

I have three drives in my desktop.

One for the OS and two others. One of these is for edited photographic images (TIFFs and Jpegs) and the other is for RAW photographic files.

Yesterday, I left the computer on overnight by accident and when I checked this morning it had emptied the entire drive of RAW files.

Fortunately, I save everything to external drives, so I can copy them back over.

But, what in Windows 8 caused this to happen?

I want to switch it off in case I ever leave it on overnight again.

Thanks.

D.

yoyo

Dinarius wrote: »

I have three drives in my desktop.

One for the OS and two others. One of these is for edited photographic images (TIFFs and Jpegs) and the other is for RAW photographic files.

Yesterday, I left the computer on overnight by accident and when I checked this morning it had emptied the entire drive of RAW files.

Fortunately, I save everything to external drives, so I can copy them back over.

But, what in Windows 8 caused this to happen?

I want to switch it off in case I ever leave it on overnight again.

Thanks.

D.

Do you have any system maintenance packages like tune up utilities, Norton that may delete .raw files? I've no idea but this doesn't sound like a Windows issue. Certainly you should be able to leave a Windows machine on overnight. I'll move this over to the Windows forum..

Nick

Dinarius

Nick,

I think I may have a virus.

Just rebooted and the drive isn't listed at all now. Only the OS drive and the Edited Images drives are there.

What's the best way to approach this?

a. How do I find the virus? I don't think I have anything installed - silly, I know.

b. How do I *find* the drive that is no longer listed?

Thanks.

D.

Capt'n Midnight

the drive could have failed , sh*t happens

check the BIOS/Setup before windows starts to see if the drive is listed there - is the machine making funny noises

with external drives windows just loves to say drive recognised on external drives and offering to format it at the drop of a hat

photorec can pull photos off the drive if the partition has been deleted.

Dinarius

Ok, here's what's happening....

1. I reboot.

2. It pauses at the DELL screen with F2=setup and F12=Boot menu in the top right hand corner. The reboot simply comes to a halt here.

3. After a while the screen goes blank except for a flashing '-' in the top left hand corner.

4. Then a message appears saying.........

Drive 2 not found: Serial ATA, SATA-2. Alert! Failed to detect one or more drives during post. Strike F1 to continue, F2 to run the setup utility, F5 to run onboard diagnostics.

Which one should I choose?

Thanks guys. I REALLY appreciate this. This is how I earn my living and it has never happened to me before.

D.

PropJoe10

I would imagine that you're looking at a hard disk failure there. Have you set up a raid configuration in the BIOS?

Dinarius

PropJoe10 wrote: »

I would imagine that you're looking at a hard disk failure there. Have you set up a raid configuration in the BIOS?

I have no idea what you mean by that. :rolleyes:

Tell me how and I will.

How do I establish if the drive has failed?

Thanks.

D.

PropJoe10

Dinarius wrote: »

I have no idea what you mean by that. :rolleyes:

Tell me how and I will.

How do I establish if the drive has failed?

Thanks.

D.

Sorry, didnt mean to blind you with science. A RAID configuration is where you can set up two hard drives in the BIOS to act as backups for each other basically - theres different configurations where you can set them up as mirrors of each other (for duplicate copies of everything so if one drive fails you still have your data). its a bit hard to explain but if you dont know what it means then its unlikely you have this set up.

Are you able to boot to the OS drive now at all? Sorry, I was a bit confused by your last post.

Dinarius

Yes.

I can bootup the machine and the Edited Images HD (along with OS HD, obviously) is visible.

D.

Dinarius

Edited..........

Ok.

Just shutdown the machine, rebooted and everything started normally!

What checks should I do (apart from copying everything from that HD again) to see if everything is OK?

Thanks.

D.

beauf

You can generally get a utility from whomever made the hard drive to check its health.

http://www.howtogeek.com/134735/how-to-see-if-your-hard-drive-is-dying/

PropJoe10

Dinarius wrote: »

Edited..........

Ok.

Just shutdown the machine, rebooted and everything started normally!

What checks should I do (apart from copying everything from that HD again) to see if everything is OK?

Thanks.

D.

If the hard drive in question is now visible again in My Computer, run a ChkDsk on it. Right click on it, select Properties >>Tools and Check for Errors. Also run a virus scan, just in case you've got a virus or some malware causing your problems. Download Malwarebytes and run that too.

Dinarius

Thanks guys.

D.

Capt'n Midnight

actually don't run a chkdsk on it, yet
and don't ever run chkdsk on a failing drive - it's only use is to tidy up directory entries

OK it's a Dell so F2 to go into setup and see what drives are listed there

a reboot and F5 will take you to the onboard diagnostics which can see if the drive is OK

if all else fails
Alt-F will make it go beep and reset to factory defaults




since the PC was left on overnight I doubt it was moved so unlikely that loosening and tightening the cables on the drive will help ( it's one of the tricks for IDE drives not working after moving a PC , and only after rulling out other stuff )


ignore the comments about RAID it being a DELL it would scream RAID in the error message
( RAID 0 means disks are stripped so you would see neither drive
RAID 1 means disks are mirrored so even if one dies you still see everything )

jamesd

Backup the drive onto an external drive asap before doing anything.