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funny folders

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by cy.tusanda

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Dear All,

I have a friend who came from Russia. He came and he brought his harddisk with him. Hoping to get an access to his harddisk he asked me to connected the HD to my computer as a slave drive. The HD detected and we can see the content of his HD. But there are some folders which cannot be read, the folders name reads like "______._____"
he said that's probably because of the Russian language he used in his old Windows. Then we change my Windows (2000) to use Russian language, but that didn't work. I was worried that that folders probably a broken folders not some language problems.

Anyone can help, please?

Thanks,

Yama

4 replies

by thechas

1. What version of Windows are you each using?

If you are using Windows 9X, and he uses NT, 2000, or XP the drive could be formatted as a NTFS volume that W9X cannot read.

2. Was the drive too large for the BIOS on his motherboard to properly detect it?

If so, drive overlay software may have been used to set up the drive.
If drive overlay software is used to set up a drive, the drive overlay software needs to be installed on the boot drive for you to be able to access the drive.

3. It is also possible that the X-Ray scans coming through airport security damaged the data on the drive.
The large magnets that are in the X-Ray machines can cause data loss on any magnetic storage media.

Chas

by cy.tusanda

1. The Windows I'm using now is Windows 98. But the problem is not all folders is like that, only 3-4 folders is like "_______._____"

2. I don't think so, because the computer is Compaq Deskpro Pentium III and I think will not have problem with larger volume of harddisk. Because we can see & read some folders.

3. Maybe.

Thanks Chas.

Yama

by otl

To view the contents of the folder run;

chkdsk/v d:\ >> c:\(whatever directory)\temp.txt

Will give you a hard(file) copy of everything on the disk, can then open temp.txt with a word editing program to find out what is in the directories.

by sgt_shultz

do NOT run chkdsk or scandisk, you will hose his file system. he has more bits to store filenames because of cyrillic alphabet has more characters. see japanese or chinese for similar problem. you will need help from microsoft. see support.microsoft.com or call them

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