Full hard drive inaccessible (wd160)

[sevenbeansalad]

I have a 160 gig hard drive here with 500mb of space left and when you click on it to browse the files inside it there is nothing there. Is this because the hard drive is so full that it was corrupted?

Input appreciated,
Christopher

[BipolarBill]

Is it empty or inaccessible? It can't be both.

Have you scanned the drive for errors? Have you checked for viruses? There has been a resurgence of viruses with payloads.

[sevenbeansalad]

I am sorry, I should have given more info.

The drive is full but I cannot access any of the files that are on it.

I scanned the drive using win xp scandisk without errors.

The drive was being used as a secondary drive in a media pc.

There are a couple of shows/movies that we had not watched yet that were being stored on this drive.

[BipolarBill]

So what happens when you click on the files?

[sevenbeansalad]

You cannot see any files and yet when you go to the properties of the drive it shows 149gb used and we know that there is something on there.

I am thinking that I should just forget about what is on the drive and reformat.

[BipolarBill]

Try copying something to it. How much space is shown, BTW? Used? Available?

[sevenbeansalad]

I copied a file to it and I was able to open it.

Used space is 148gb

Free space is 456mb

Does this mean that the files might be there but are hidden?

Thanks for helping me,
Christopher

[BipolarBill]

Are hidden files and folders enabled in Folder Options?

[sevenbeansalad]

I enabled that option and it did not do anything.

Is it posssible for a drive that is not storing the operating system files to get a virus and the hdd that the os is on be clean?

[dajogejr]

Here's a no brainer, sorry for pointing out the obvious...

If you look in disk management, is the whole drive formatted and partition so you can access it?

right click my computer, left click manage.
On the left pane, click on Disk Management.

Does it show the whole disk as usable, formatted, healthy, etc?

It should be similar to this:

Oh, and don't forget, you won't get 160 GB on a 160GB disk.
Manufacturer's rate their hard drives as 1000MB = 1GB, but...in reality, 1024 MB equal 1 GB....

The full formatted capacity of that drive is closer to 155 GB or so, give or take.

[sevenbeansalad]

It shows as healthy 149gb.

[BipolarBill]

Answer my question about hidden files please.

It looks like you just overfilled the drive. I would format it.

[sevenbeansalad]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by sevenbeansalad
[B]I enabled that option and it did not do anything.[QUOTE][i]


yes