Problem after swapping HDD to another tower

M

MrPatate

Gawd
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Jan 4, 2007
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Hi,

I've swap a few HDDs to a newer tower and now on one drive some video files are "empty", they are there, taking the space required to stock them but cannot be played. The files next to it are OK in the same folder (all files were written at the same time).

I've never had such a problem, I did this maneuver often and been cautious about static discharge, magnetic screwdriver, etc.

I tried Windows Error Checking (in the Properties of the HDD) but nothing came back. Any idea what to do? :(

Thanks
 
Have you tried to take "Ownership" of the files through Properties? Also could you be missing video codecs to playback the files?
 
I was thinking video codecs. But the permissions option is a good one as well.

Good luck!
 
LoBoxJa said:
Have you tried to take "Ownership" of the files through Properties? Also could you be missing video codecs to playback the files?
Click to expand...
I haven't tried ownership, usually there is a popup when this problem is happening, me VLC opens it but doesnt play it as if the file was empty. Files in the same folder play nicely, they all have the same codec and VLC played them before the swap.

I'll try ownership later today(not at home right now), but I'm afraid the disk writing that will occur with it might prevent me from recuperating them later.
 
Try to copy the "empty" files to another, known 100% working, hard drive.
This will reveal any read errors that might be occurring on the source drive.
(Some video files (depending on container used, like AVI) have important index information located at the end of the file and if that portion of the file cannot be read/seeked, the player will abort or treat the file as empty or incomplete.)

If the copy works, try to play the copied file. If that fails, it becomes more difficult to know what happened. It could be any of the following:
1) The video file was corrupted before/when it was originally written to the HDD.
2) The video file degraded after being written to the HDD. (magnetic surface failure over time)
3) Missing/broken codecs as already mentioned
4) Buggy video drivers/video player software
5) Other even less likely things like OS issues, HTFS filesystem issues, etc.

What OS was used on the old system and what OS is on the new tower system? Windows, but which version? Both 64bit?
Any commonality between the video files that won't play? (same extension, codec used, etc.)?

I've had a 4 TB USB drive give me playback problems for a few random files in a similar fashion and it was just degradation of sectors over time. Files originally written just fine suddenly wouldn't play any more. Attempts to copy the files to another drive would give read errors (hence my suggestion above). I now have a 2nd 4 TB HDD with a backup of every file just in case. With drives as cheap as they are now, it makes sense.
 
Azrak said:
Try to copy the "empty" files to another, known 100% working, hard drive.
This will reveal any read errors that might be occurring on the source drive.
(Some video files (depending on container used, like AVI) have important index information located at the end of the file and if that portion of the file cannot be read/seeked, the player will abort or treat the file as empty or incomplete.)

If the copy works, try to play the copied file. If that fails, it becomes more difficult to know what happened. It could be any of the following:
1) The video file was corrupted before/when it was originally written to the HDD.
2) The video file degraded after being written to the HDD. (magnetic surface failure over time)
3) Missing/broken codecs as already mentioned
4) Buggy video drivers/video player software
5) Other even less likely things like OS issues, HTFS filesystem issues, etc.

What OS was used on the old system and what OS is on the new tower system? Windows, but which version? Both 64bit?
Any commonality between the video files that won't play? (same extension, codec used, etc.)?

I've had a 4 TB USB drive give me playback problems for a few random files in a similar fashion and it was just degradation of sectors over time. Files originally written just fine suddenly wouldn't play any more. Attempts to copy the files to another drive would give read errors (hence my suggestion above). I now have a 2nd 4 TB HDD with a backup of every file just in case. With drives as cheap as they are now, it makes sense.
Click to expand...

That's a good idea to try copying them. I'll do that before anything else (since there's no writing on the HDD involved).
1) Can't be, all the files were OK a day before transferring the HDD to the new tower and worked flawlessly.
2) Again doubtful, the only thing that could have done it would be in the swap(which I did take care of doing correctly and safely, this isn't my first time).
3) For sure it isn't a codec problem.
4) Same type of files with the same codec work flawlessly and they are in the same folder.
5) Both computer are Win7 64bit, both fully updated and for the new tower win7 was all up to date before installing the HDD (done while no power of course).

All I can think of that would do that is if I did the swap in an unsafe way (which I didn't) but I probably failed at something even if nothing magnetic was near, static shock delivered, power was off completely...

I have a back up, but was missing a bit of space to have it all. So in the end I might loose 10% of the files if nothing works.

I was wondering if a software would be able to get them back but it isn't like a wrongfully deleted file which isn't in the file table anymore but still could be available on the drive itself.
 
Totally agree with your statements above. I was reaching for straws on 1, 2 and 3 above.

I'm running out of ideas to think of.
1. The copy worked, so the drive *thinks* everything is fine and so does HTFS (lack of errors proves this out).
2. The files used to play just fine before the move.
3. The act of physically moving the drive won't be the cause.

Do you have any way to verify the checksums of the files as originally written? Without that there is no way to know if the file itself is corrupted or if there is an external cause to the playback failure.

Do you still have access to the original system? Can you put the drive back into it and try to read/play the files? Or, copy the copies you already made to a USB flash drive and put it into the original computer and see if it will play.
Do you have another laptop or computer available to test with?
Do you have an external USB-to-IDE/SATA converter device you could use to plug the drive into a free USB port on another computer?
Lastly, do you have a HEX editor program? Use it to open a working file and see the bytes at the beginning and end of the file. Then open a "bad" file and see if it is all zeros or garbage. It won't be human-readable but might offer some clues depending on what you see.

Only other wild ideas I can think of: Copy protection/licensing/DRM kicking in?
 
Most of the files are still accessible, so I'll simply recover what I can from the back up and leave the rest. I know nothing prevents me from reading the files, that the files themselves are corrupted. Without knowing it I probably delivered a small static shock to the drive in the transfer.

To know if the HDD is going bad or if its the manipulation I did that did it, a HDD Diagnostic software will be able to tell me or it might miss something?
 
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