It'll play off my hard drive, but I can't copy/delete/move it?

[Purple Materia]

So I downloaded some anime a few weeks ago. And as I normally do, every time I grab something new, I copy it to my external hard drive so I'll have it in two places.

Well today I went to copy over the entirety of the drive to another PC, and noticed one of the directories wouldn't copy over. The drive took up zero space on the hard drive and I couldn't copy it. I get the error that the directory wasn't found and to verify it's location. But the weird part is I can still play the video. I just have to run it off the external hard drive rather than copy it over. I figured the problem would disappear if I plug the drive into a different computer but sure enough, same deal.

I'm not sure if I should be worried about a possible failing drive, or if the files were simply corrupted. It happens, I can always get the lost series again. The drive is almost a year old, it's a 1TB Western Digital My Passport, and both computers are running Windows 7.

 

[Mr. X]

Sounds like the drive has some corrupt sectors on it.

Have you scanned the drive yet to see if any sectors are corrupt?

 

[Tsutarja]

Have you tried copying the file over again to really see if it's corrupt? I had a similar case when I backed up my music to my Seagate external HDD for my current desktop from my old one and select files somehow got corrupt while transferring so what I did was just copied the file over again, overwrote the corrupt file and it worked fine again.

And like Mr. X said, please be sure to check for corrupt sectors on your drive to make sure it isn't bad either.

 

[Purple Materia]

Sounds like the drive has some corrupt sectors on it.

Have you scanned the drive yet to see if any sectors are corrupt?

Doing it right now. I've been monitoring the drive's SMART info using CrystalDisk over the past few months and haven't noticed any of the sectors going bad. I'll report back with the results of the chkdsk.

Have you tried copying the file over again to really see if it's corrupt? I had a similar case when I backed up my music to my Seagate external HDD for my current desktop from my old one and select files somehow got corrupt while transferring so what I did was just copied the file over again, overwrote the corrupt file and it worked fine again.

The source material is gone; It was originally on my desktop which I was running Ubuntu 12.04, then I installed Windows 7 on it, so all the files that were on the Linux partition are gone.

EDIT: I think the USB cable might have something to do with it. I read that the ones that come bundled with the drives are infamous for being faulty. I guess we'll see, after the results of the chkdsk. 49506 files processed... man, this is taking forever!

EDIT 2: Just finished the chkdsk (Six hours!) and Windows reported no problems. So... I'm not really sure why it had the issue with the last series.

 

[Mr. X]

I didn't consider the cable - It's possiable but if that was messed up, then you'd be having trouble with all the files instead of those specific files.

I've had similar happen in the past although it was the result of chaining cords together (Cord connected to a couple of extenders) instead of damage.

 

[Tsutarja]

At least the chkdsk didn't even find any erorrs, and wow! I didn't even consider the USB cable! Just try with a different cable if you haven't done so already and see if you can get the file! n_n

And yeah, I can relate to bad cables :P I had a cable going bad on a hard drive and the drive was clicking when I used that cable so I used a different cable and all was fine again

 

[Melody]

If replacing the cable/swapping the cable out doesn't help you, you might want to try this.

I'm getting the feeling that this is an issue of a security problem. This is especially common if your hard drive is formatted in the NTFS filesystem format, and it can happen to files you're transferring from one computer or another. Basically if the file has ever resided within your user folder ([C/D/X]:/Users/<your username>), you computer may have protected these files with NTFS permissions to ensure that someone logged in on another account on the same computer can't access them.

TO CHECK THIS: Right click on the directory, Click Properties, then click the Security tab

The image should show exactly what it should look like.

Also an "Administrators" entry on this list with the same permissions is advisable so that you can take ownership of the files by logging into an administrative account. (Provided that you have access to one)

If you see any entries starting with "S-<something something random hash>" then you know you have a problem. These are permissions entries that Windows does not recognize. (Probably added by another computer at some point)

Essentially you need to make sure your own username (the name you login as) at least is on the access list of the folder. If you're particularly adventurous, you can add "Everyone" to the list and this will avert further problems when you've transferred the files to other hard drives. This will fail if you are not on the access list at "Full Control" From the above screenshot dialog, you can click "Edit..." then "Add..." and type "Everyone" into the box and hit OK. Then make sure to check "Full Control" and this will tick the rest of the boxes too. Finally you'll want to hit OK or Apply (If you want to keep the dialog open) and wait for it to apply the permissions, which may take a while depending on how many files are in the folder.

IF YOU DON'T APPEAR ON THE LIST AS HAVING FULL ACCESS, YOU CAN FIX THIS IF YOUR ACCOUNT IS ADMINISTRATOR! (You may need to beg your parents to help you or give you the password if not, but that's another thing entirely)

You can GET HERE by clicking the "Advanced" Button seen in the previous screenshot step, once you're on the security tab in the properties.

 

[Purple Materia]

<snip>

Would changing the security settings on the drive itself be more viable instead of just one or two directories? The directory in question has become invalid, so I can't really do anything to that specific directory and set of files.

What I did was redownload the missing series and copy it over a second time and it seems to have worked. I'll format it sometime later to remove the directory I can't get rid of.

 

[Melody]

You can in fact apply the same settings to the entire drive; but doing it that way might take a lot longer since you're essentially reassigning permissions to the entire drive.

EDIT: If you plan to reformat the drive, you might try formatting as ExFAT to avoid NTFS glitches like this one. The ExFAT file system doesn't have the 4 GB file limitation either, so it's all you need, and when you copy from an NTFS drive to an ExFAT drive, the security is stripped.

 

[Purple Materia]

You can in fact apply the same settings to the entire drive; but doing it that way might take a lot longer since you're essentially reassigning permissions to the entire drive.

Awesome, sounds like a plan.

EDIT: If you plan to reformat the drive, you might try formatting as ExFAT to avoid NTFS glitches like this one. The ExFAT file system doesn't have the 4 GB file limitation either, so it's all you need, and when you copy from an NTFS drive to an ExFAT drive, the security is stripped.

I'll keep that in mind, thanks. :)

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

Chances are there's an error in the FAT journal in the hard drive. To be honest, this is sort of expected from Windows—it's not really the smartest when it comes to writing to the disk journal.

I don't really have a solution for you unless you have a secondary external disk that uses FAT32 instead of NTFS. If you do, I'd advise copying everything from the first external HDD onto a FAT32 partition, as FAT32 doesn't have file encryption/compression (which is very easily corruptable), and it doesn't use file permissions like NTFS. Doing that is a really good way to wipe clean any corrupt file access errors from existence.

If you can, you should probably stick to using FAT32 instead of NTFS if it's just you that uses your computer. While there is a limit to how big Windows itself can make a FAT32 partition (somewhere around 128 GB if memory serves), there are programs that can stretch it to be up to 4 terabytes (aka the physical limit of the FAT32 filing table).