File corruptions - Help

gubbs

I've been going back over some old pictures recently, (catching up on printing) and found that quite a few images have been corrupted. On opening I sometimes get an error sayng that the file has been truncated, on other files there are coloured bands going across the pictures. Everything else seems fine but tbh I only use it for photography and web browsing.

Anyone got any idea what could be causing this? I suspect its a problem with the hard drive, but I know nothing.

Thanks in advance :thumb

patch29

Do you have a hard copy on CD or only on your hard drive?

What program are you opening them in that is giving you the trouble?

Have you tried making a duplicate of the file on another hard drive or CD to see if it transfers ok, and if that copy can be opened?

Andy

gubbs wrote:

I've been going back over some old pictures recently, (catching up on printing) and found that quite a few images have been corrupted. On opening I sometimes get an error sayng that the file has been truncated, on other files there are coloured bands going across the pictures. Everything else seems fine but tbh I only use it for photography and web browsing.

Anyone got any idea what could be causing this? I suspect its a problem with the hard drive, but I know nothing.

Thanks in advance

have you tried opening in other programs, like windows explorer, or irfanview (free) or some other editor/photo browser?

pathfinder

andy wrote:

have you tried opening in other programs, like windows explorer, or irfanview (free) or some other editor/photo browser?

Windows XP? Hard drive failure or virus are my first guesses. What size hard drive are these on??

I had a total loss of 2 160 Gb hard drives last summer with WIN XP, because Win XP did not support greater than 137 GB drives natively. It needs a special driver, and it started kind of like this, intermittent file corruptions. Hmmm. Back up all your Images NOW, Gubbsie. Then sort this out, but get every image on another media or two first.

John Mueller

I have that problem too. C1 le is the one that opens like that the most.Canon sw and pscs are least to do it.
If you have diifferent progs,try the same file and see if they will open in the other.
Then again I talking about raw files.Are yours post jpegs?
I doubt if its HD failure,but I could be wrong:uhoh

wxwax

pathfinder wrote:

Windows XP? Hard drive failure or virus are my first guesses. What size hard drive are these on??

I had a total loss of 2 160 Gb hard drives last summer with WIN XP, because Win XP did not support greater than 137 GB drives natively. It needs a special driver, and it started kind of like this, intermittent file corruptions. Hmmm. Back up all your Images NOW, Gubbsie. Then sort this out, but get every image on another media or two first.

Wow, thanks for the warning. Sorry to hear about your files, that blows. Where should I look for the driver?

pathfinder

wxwax wrote:

Wow, thanks for the warning. Sorry to hear about your files, that blows. Where should I look for the driver?

I think I found it on the Western digital website. I was really ticked because I had to format and start over with my primary AND my backup drive. Fortuanately I had a third 80Gb drive for storage of my images so they were not compromised.
And there was no warning about drives larger than 137 GB not supported by Windows anywhere - The drives were listed OK for Windows. It started innocently too - just an occaisional file that did not seem right - my data was on one drive and the OS on the main drive. Then one day I got the blue screen of death - and the box would not boot at all. Maybe that is what started me down the path of looking for a better way. I spent 3 days work getting the sytem rebuilt. The drivers are asked for during a primary XP install now.

wxwax

Thanks, mate. I'll check Maxtor's website.

gubbs

I think I'm pretty well fixed up with AV and firewalls. But it is XP and a 160gb HD, so now I' m worried.
I got home late last night so wasn't able to check if it was happening in any applications other than PS-CS. I'll check that out later on.

I was already considering getting a firewire drive so I've just ordered one along with a new 300gb internal drive...should be here in the morning. I've got about 75% of my stuff backed up onto CD's but I'm a bit behind. I really need to get better at this!! I'll just have to sweat it out till tomorrow.....Expect spotty access :uhoh

Thanks for the help and advice

gubbs

wxwax wrote:

Thanks, mate. I'll check Maxtor's website.

How did you get on Sid? My new drive is a Maxtor so I'd be very interested to hear

pathfinder

gubbs wrote:

I think I'm pretty well fixed up with AV and firewalls. But it is XP and a 160gb HD, so now I' m worried.
I got home late last night so wasn't able to check if it was happening in any applications other than PS-CS. I'll check that out later on.

I was already considering getting a firewire drive so I've just ordered one along with a new 300gb internal drive...should be here in the morning. I've got about 75% of my stuff backed up onto CD's but I'm a bit behind. I really need to get better at this!! I'll just have to sweat it out till tomorrow.....Expect spotty access :uhoh

Thanks for the help and advice

That's how it started for me Gubbs. Just now and then, and then funny kinds of failures in the OS. Back up your images now. Maybe the updates to XP incorporate the driver for 160GB drives now, but XP as originally shipped did not support drives larger than 137Gb. The 160Gb drives have 8mb caches rather than 2 Mb caches like the smaller drives - and that is where the problem was - XP did not wait for the 8MB cache to fully clear, and files would get overwritten. That is why the images began to get striped and then not load. The operating system took longer to get corrupted, but it did, and when it did, I had to format and completely reinstall the system. Welcome to Windows!:uhoh

gubbs

pathfinder wrote:

That's how it started for me Gubbs. Just now and then, and then funny kinds of failures in the OS. Back up your images now. Maybe the updates to XP incorporate the driver for 160GB drives now, but XP as originally shipped did not support drives larger than 137Gb. The 160Gb drives have 8mb caches rather than 2 Mb caches like the smaller drives - and that is where the problem was - XP did not wait for the 8MB cache to fully clear, and files would get overwritten. That is why the images began to get striped and then not load. The operating system took longer to get corrupted, but it did, and when it did, I had to format and completely reinstall the system. Welcome to Windows!:uhoh

Thanks PF - lets hope I get it in time

Sid - Maxtor link

ginger_55

aaaaaaaaaggggggggggghhhhhhhh

?????????

g

I go back to Oct, Nov with unbacked up stuff...........hours, weeks, on a CD, no DVD thing on computer (I was an idiot).

Can I just put stuff on it up to about 125 gb?

right now it says I have used about 37 gb with 115 free.

And I know I should back up my stuff anyway. I just started getting so much stuff.

wxwax

gubbs wrote:

Thanks PF - lets hope I get it in time

Sid - Maxtor link

Thanks Gubbsie.

gubbs

Just tried opening a couple of the images in question and they seem to be Ok, although its says its an "unsupported colour depth" and I also loose the layers

digismile

I don't know if this is just a Maxtor thing, but my company just recently had to replace about 600 hard drives, all Maxtors. They suffered from a general failer to read files over time (including the O/S). What was described in this thread as a problem with reading photos, we had similar problems with Word documents, Excel files, photos, etc. All the hard drives were changed to WD's.

My only worry is that my second HD at home is a Maxtor ...:uhoh

Brad

gubbs

Brad the original drive is a Western Digital, the new one is a Maxtor.

Anyway the new drive is in and all my files are currently on 3 separate HD's. So I'm feeling a little less vulnerable. Next, I was going to reinstall PSCS and then just see how things work out.

Any tips or advice that anyone has on how set up the separate drives would be apreciated, for example: is best to have applications on one drive and working files on the other ?

Thanks

pathfinder

gubbs wrote:

Brad the original drive is a Western Digital, the new one is a Maxtor.

Anyway the new drive is in and all my files are currently on 3 separate HD's. So I'm feeling a little less vulnerable. Next, I was going to reinstall PSCS and then just see how things work out.

Any tips or advice that anyone has on how set up the separate drives would be apreciated, for example: is best to have applications on one drive and working files on the other ?

Thanks

On my XP box which is the 6 or 7th I've had over the years, I learned to put my OS on drive C:, and on drive and E: I have a copy of my data files and some of my applications. Belt and suspenders is the way to go! That is why I did not lose my pictures last summer when both new 160Gb drives went south. I had them on a third 80Gb drive as a back up to my primary data drive.

The manufacturers really bear some responsibility here for my travails. To sell 160 Gb drives without including the necessary driver and without ANY warning that the drives would become corupted by WIN XP without the driver borders on criminality. The computer industry gets away with data murder and just walks away!

digismile

This is the way I have run my machine for a long time:

1. Primary Drive with O/S and applications with sufficient space for O/S swap.
2. Secondary drive partitioned into 2 volumes
a) First partition is for a doing a Norton Ghost of the Primary, plus scratch space for Photoshop, etc. so must be of equal or larger size to the primary drive.
b) All data in second partition
3. External USB drive for data backup.

The Norton Ghost allows a very rapid reinstallation of your boot drive if required. Although I have all original installation disks, it can be a real pain.

I backup to both the USB drive and DVD.

pathfinder

digismile wrote:

This is the way I have run my machine for a long time:

1. Primary Drive with O/S and applications with sufficient space for O/S swap.
2. Secondary drive partitioned into 2 volumes
a) First partition is for a doing a Norton Ghost of the Primary, plus scratch space for Photoshop, etc. so must be of equal or larger size to the primary drive.
b) All data in second partition
3. External USB drive for data backup.

The Norton Ghost allows a very rapid reinstallation of your boot drive if required. Although I have all original installation disks, it can be a real pain.

I backup to both the USB drive and DVD.

Good point - I neglected to describe my back up of drive C: on Drive as well as data storage .

gubbs

Just an update & a warning

Having tried multiple CF cards, 3 card readers, 3 hard drives, HD utilities, reinstalling all my key software & a new graphics driver, the problem was still getting worse and was apparent in various graphics packages.

So, I decided to reload the whole lot from scratch. Which, I think has (at last) sorted out the problem. I uploaded 350 images yesterday without a single corruption.

Now the Warning. On my first attempt at recovering Windows everything was going fine, Windows loaded without a hitch, I then loaded up my ISP software and started to download the windows updates. I think there were 21 critical updates followed by SP2 and then another 4 critical updates. I didn't visit any other sites or recieve any emails but somehow a spyware/adware package loaded itself on my system, started to use my bandwith and seemed to block me from downloading any Antivirus/spy software.

So I had to start all over again.
Second time round, I did the following:

• Turned on the windows firewall (default setting is off) before allowing broadband to connect.
• Used firefox (which I pulled back from my back up HD, my av was corrupted) to download new av software
• Downloaded Windows updates
• Disconnect from broadband
• Turn off AV software
• Install Windows Updates
• repeat the last 4 stages twice

Took me around 12 hours in total!

Time for a Mac maybe

Khaos

pathfinder wrote:

Windows XP? Hard drive failure or virus are my first guesses. What size hard drive are these on??

I had a total loss of 2 160 Gb hard drives last summer with WIN XP, because Win XP did not support greater than 137 GB drives natively. It needs a special driver, and it started kind of like this, intermittent file corruptions. Hmmm. Back up all your Images NOW, Gubbsie. Then sort this out, but get every image on another media or two first.

Windows 2000 with SP3 or later and Windows XP with SP1 or later support hard drives over 137 GB. If you don't use the latest SP, you're asking for trouble.

Also, the big factor is your motherboard. Older boards, even with the latest BIOS can't support drives bigger than 137 GB. However, most drive manufacturers offer a program that preloads as a psuedo bios that will allow windows to see the full hard drive.

wxwax

Khaos wrote:

Windows 2000 with SP3 or later and Windows XP with SP1 or later support hard drives over 137 GB. If you don't use the latest SP, you're asking for trouble.

Kahos, I'm no expert on computers, but that's not what the Maxtor site appears to say.

Installation Option 1. Upgrade the operating system to either Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 (or newer) or Windows XP with Service Pack 1 (or newer) and download the Maxtor Big Drive Enabler software patch. The Maxtor Big Drive Enabler, once executed, will update the Windows registry for large drive support.

Source

pathfinder

Khaos wrote:

Windows 2000 with SP3 or later and Windows XP with SP1 or later support hard drives over 137 GB. If you don't use the latest SP, you're asking for trouble.

Also, the big factor is your motherboard. Older boards, even with the latest BIOS can't support drives bigger than 137 GB. However, most drive manufacturers offer a program that preloads as a psuedo bios that will allow windows to see the full hard drive.

You are absolutely correct - but this all happened months before anyone ever heard of SP1. There was no announcement by Microsoft or by the drive manufacturer. The box from Western Digital said OK for Windows XP>> NOT!!! And my BIOS were not the problem, the problem was WIN XP did not support drives larger than 137 Gb!
This was just one of the expriences like Gubbs is going through now that led me to the other side. I now use two g5s, and a PowerBook. And I spend almost no time maintaining my computers, just using them. I don't have to contact Apple or Adobe to reinstall my software either,unlike in the Windoze world.

Dee

Maxtor Drives
I use a Macintosh, but I ordered a large Maxtor Firewire drive. Drive one failed (fortunately I back up my images on CD) Maxtor said it was because of a switch or lack of a switch. Unfortunately I did lose data on a project I'd been working on, and had to redo the entire thing!!! Sent the drive back and got a new one. Drive two failed before a year was up. Due to Drive one's failure I was careful to back everything up. I exchanged drives again. After awhile Drive three failed, but warranty date was gone. I gave up on Maxtor Firewire drives. It concerns me that I have a Maxtor internal in my Mac, but I guess they work better than externals.

I also have a firewire external IBM drive attached and that has worked fine. We ordered some OWC external firewire drives, and one has failed! Now these externals are designed to be carried around to accompany laptops and I'm pretty careful with them. However I'm always exchanging lots of files every day.

My daughter is responsible for the Windows machines in the office and she's constantly updating the files and scanning for viruses. She managed to get rid of one virus, and now just turns the machine OFF when it's not in use. It is connected to the internet.

Now Apple is offering updates every so often, and while it doesn't take that much time it's still an interruption in my computer use.

Many years ago we did battle with Mac viruses -- including some "donated" lovingly to us from our Windows Client's Word Macro viruses!

Another was donated from a temporary worker who didn't ask, she just decided to load some little program trying to impress one of our male employees. It was specifically mentioned in the temp contract that uploading or downloading any files from the employer's computers was prohibited!

Then our service bureau told us we gave them a virus, and once again we had to run our virus checker on all the machines. Then the virus got on the zip disks we were using, and even backed up on a CD! We had to make sure everyone ran a virus check on them. Since we had over 200 zips, I had to make sure one of the employees checked every single disk before they went back in circulation -- because of how quickly we had to work the employees would forget.

While we never lost data, never had to completely wipe and reload software, those incidents were annoying enough. I can only imagine how annoying it is today with all the viruses sweeping the Windows world. I think the virus are meaner and nastier today then they were years ago.

Of course we weren't connected to the internet back then as everyone is today either.

So my sympathy goes out to everyone with computer problems, whether it's viruses, disk failure or data corruption. It's just no fun!

Khaos

wxwax wrote:

Kahos, I'm no expert on computers, but that's not what the Maxtor site appears to say.



Source

That's only needed if your mother board doesn't support the larger drives. Windows relies on the BIOS for hardware information, and then sets that info in the registry which is loaded on every boot. Since the BIOS isn't correctly seeing the larger drive, Maxtor has a program that installs a registry key stating the drive and the drives capacity which, like I said before, acts like a psuedo BIOS allowing windows to "see" the drive in its true size.

gubbs

Thanks Sid!! I forgot about the big drive enabler

JamesJWeg

I work on computers for a living and for years worked in a pc computer clone mfr/repair shop, bottom line, I do NOT own Maxtor, end of story. I have seen 100% failure rate on a single order of 250 drives in under a year from Maxtor, yes, 250 out of 250 died in under a year. They were covered under warrenty, but the drive replacment cost is really not the issue, data loss and time to repair/rebuild is the big pic.

James.

rainforest1155

JamesJWeg wrote:

I work on computers for a living and for years worked in a pc computer clone mfr/repair shop, bottom line, I do NOT own Maxtor, end of story. I have seen 100% failure rate on a single order of 250 drives in under a year from Maxtor, yes, 250 out of 250 died in under a year. They were covered under warrenty, but the drive replacment cost is really not the issue, data loss and time to repair/rebuild is the big pic.

That really depends. It's not a particular company, it's more like a virus or so which infects one company and the next time another company. My brother had at least 3 defect IBM drives in half a year! That was a time when IBM failures were reported all over the place.
My Maxtor was also already in RMA, but I do also have a Seagate which was in RMA already.

Not that I'm defending the faultrate of the companies, but it's sadly a common problem.

Sebastian

JamesJWeg

rainforest1155 wrote:

That really depends. It's not a particular company, it's more like a virus or so which infects one company and the next time another company. My brother had at least 3 defect IBM drives in half a year! That was a time when IBM failures were reported all over the place.
My Maxtor was also already in RMA, but I do also have a Seagate which was in RMA already.

Not that I'm defending the faultrate of the companies, but it's sadly a common problem.

Sebastian

Yes, you are right, it is a common problem, but as someone who sold a LOT of drives I do NOT buy Maxtor no matter how cheap.

James.

wxwax

Well, you're skeering me. I have two Maxtor external drives. The first is a smallish one, only 30GB I think, and it's been fine for about a year now. I also have a larger 120GB drive, perhaps 6 months, it's OK too.

When I researched them, I saw only glowing reviews. Never heard a whisper about failures. Whereas I read about problems with Westerns and Lacies. So your posts come as quite a surprise.