Hello kinda peoples I had a problem earlier this week regarding my external maxtor drive. see here http://computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/38492.html It was a problem caused by me accidentily quick formatting the drive during a windows install which I then fixed using a hard drive recovery program called Partition Table Doctor. It fixed the partition so that windows recognised it again. Everything worked fine, I thought I had fixed it...until I moved a few folders on the drive to other folders. I could no longer access these folders as windows told me they could not be accessed due to maybe being in use or something like that (i should of wrote that down, sorry. will add proper error later today, i dont have net access at home) I notice when I hover my mouse over the folders it tells me they are empty, also I cant move the folders back or anywhere else because I get the same error. I have tried running error check from the drive properties but it doesnt find anything and I have done a chkdsk check. I wanted to run defragmenter but it tells me that the disk is sheduled to be checked by chkdsk and defragmenter can not be run (even with third party defrag programs) It says to run chkdsk /f and i try this but get the same error in chkdsk, that it is in use or sheduled for a chkdsk check(at the next startup i presume) This sheduled chkdsk never happens so no matter how many times i restart i get the same error. I wondered what might be causing this strange problem, obviously related to the damaged partition? thanks

I read your other post and was happy and surprised that you were able to "recover". The "connection" between your partition table of contents and the contents was damaged or destroyed when you did the format. I'm not aware of any good software that YOU might use that will restore the connection. Anything you do now may destroy the data on that HDD. If the data is important enough, you should stop now and use a data recovery service.

I have backed up the most important stuff but there's still loads that i need to keep intact because i dont have enough media to back that up and my only other back up of it is too far away for now. Thanks for the reply, if anyone knows if its possible to restore this "connection" and what software to use that would be good. I tried searching but I can't seem to find much, is there another name for this table of contents? Can't windows restore it somehow? I heard maybe windows tools might damage more than they repair =/ I think maybe the defrae thing might be able to be fixed but now im not sure thats gonna fix anything anyway and may even make things worse.

I don't have a fix, but I would suggest NOT doing a defrag. It will not help the problem and could very well make things a lot worse. I agree with Badboy, that you should not use the drive any more until you try a good file recovery program. If the files are important enough, purchase a CD or DVD writer to save the files to.

I have a few file recovery programs but I can't find options to do what I want to do. But then I'm not sure what it is I need to do to fix it, is it the partition table that needs to be fixed? or the mbr or something else =/

You can try to repair the partition table but the more you mess around with it, the more likely your are to lose your data.