After serious crash all files corrupted- help?

[johnharris]

Hi
I recently had a nasty crash, and needed to format...
now i have a fresh copy of winXP on my computer, and tried to access files on my 2nd HD and they are all corrupted
first they gave me no permission to use the files which i fixed but now all mp3s dont play, jpgs wont show, and basicly i have 200gb of worthless data on my 2nd hard drive including much of my lifes work
is there any quick fix or something i am not thinking about that can fix this?
thanks!!!

[Tortanick]

All I can say is don't touch that hard drive without advice. The more you use it the harder recovery becomes.

And if no one here can help you there are profressional data recovery firms around.

[johnharris]

actually upon further investigation the problem is isolated to just 1 folder, but it happens to be a big one - 70 gb
so it's not the hard drive
is there a program that fixes headers or simply scans for corrupted data and tries to fix it?

[Rainbow32]

Use XP's error checking with automatically fix errors.

[johnharris]

how do i do that?

[Rainbow32]

Here's how-
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265
Use this method-
Manual steps to run Chkdsk from My Computer or Windows Explorer
1. Double-click My Computer, and then right-click the hard disk that you want to check.
2. Click Properties, and then click Tools.
3. Under Error-checking, click Check Now. A dialog box that shows the Check disk options is displayed,
4. To repair errors, locate bad sectors, and recover readable information, select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box, and then click Start.
Note If one or more of the files on the hard disk are open, you will receive the following message:
The disk check could not be performed because the disk check utility needs exclusive access to some Windows files on the disk. These files can be accessed by restarting Windows. Do you want to schedule the disk check to occur the next time you restart the computer?
Click Yes to schedule the disk check, and then restart your computer to start the disk check.

[johnharris]

ok just finished and unfortunatly no luck
the pictures still dont show, the mp3s still dont play etc...
is there anything else i can do?

[Seth_]

What exactly did that "nasty crash" entail?

When you explore the folder with the jpg's, don't open them. Instead, change the view option to "thumbnails". Do the pictures look ok now?