Storage Solutions A file copied on maxtor external drive is filled with zeros

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hello,

I have a new maxtor one touch drive 500GB

It actually contains a seagate ST3500610AS with a custom firmware.

I copied some movies but find that the data now (after two days) is filled with zeroes.

Any idea why this could be happening?
 
omg, i hope it's not (prolly some other issue) some sort of DRM content protection going on... what OS and media player do you use?
 
also mention how you copied the files, regular explorer copy or used some software for it...?
 
I use win XP and wmplayer (with codecs)

No viruses reported by norton on my machine as of now

file was copied with explorer only

hex editor shows that the file contains all zeroes now, probably not a DRM protection issue
 
stackoverflow said:
I use win XP and wmplayer (with codecs)

No viruses reported by norton on my machine as of now

file was copied with explorer only

hex editor shows that the file contains all zeroes now, probably not a DRM protection issue
Click to expand...

he he , these usb trojans are very rarely detected by antiviruses , as the antiviruses are signature based..

so even if ur norton doesnt report anything , ur pc may still be infected

try a test , try to do same media transfer on a pen drive

try to (if size permists) to copy same files from same computers.

if u get the same results , the rest assured that ur pc is infected.

else it may be a hardware issue.
 
if your files are still readable and non-zero on hard disk... try booting a linux live CD (or installing linux) and copying over one file to the external hdd then recheck in windows...

edit: see this list of antivirus live CDs which you should try :) Nabble - Are there any LiveCD antivirus solutions?

bitdefender, ultimatebootcd, devil linux etc...
 
Thanks a lot for the help.

1. Will norton be not able to detect the trojans when they are actually running on the machine?

2. The ultimate boot cd virus programs have very old virus definitions, bitdefender live cd can't be downloaded

Any alternative sites which I can try?

3. I will try to copy the same file again and see.

What is the best probable tool other than norton which can detected if the system is infected?

Thanks.
 
This one is File System problem.

If your data is not important, format the drive again, copy some data and test it.
 
Wait a second, what is the source of the file? What is the file type? Did you just try copying the files off a DVD (proper movie DVD, not some downloaded thing). If so, it would produce such results.
 
dlsam said:
This one is File System problem.
If your data is not important, format the drive again, copy some data and test it.
Click to expand...

thanks for the reply
I have some 400GB of data on the external maxtor disk and it is extremely important.

Are you saying that this is the issue with NTFS on the external hard drive (destination) or it is the issue with my source (internal drive)
 
KingKrool

This is the divx file downloaded from net.
On my source drive this file is still readable, no issues but on my destination maxtor disk there is an issue.
 
after dlsam's message I ran chkdsk on my boot volume and the details are as follows.

This may be an issue with the filesystem, Once my other downloads are complete and my system is backed up, I will try to run chkdsk on boot volume.

ANy other suggestions are welcome.
I am not ruling out other possibilities yet.

Thanks a lot to all.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The type of the file system is NTFS.

WARNING! F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
Index verification completed.
CHKDSK is recovering lost files.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
Security descriptor verification completed.
Correcting errors in the master file table's (MFT) BITMAP attribute.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows found problems with the file system.
Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these.

37953530 KB total disk space.
32051072 KB in 47820 files.
20500 KB in 4526 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
166470 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
5715488 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
9488382 total allocation units on disk.
1428872 allocation units available on disk.
 
Did you properly eject the disk before unplugging it? In other words, you did use the "safely remove hardware" option, right?

Have you just tried copying it again?

Also, you may want to use ProcessMon (available at live.sysinternals.com - /) and run that while you do the copy. You might learn a thing or two.

First thing to do is chkdsk, of course. You have major errors in your filesystem.
 
Just for surety, I would suggest that you try and copy data to another external USB device like say a flash drive and verify it so one can eliminate the possibility of something being physically wrong with the ext Maxtor drive.
 
Even I've faced this problem before, though, I had it with a Transcend USB Flash drive.
It was a Transcend Jetflash 2GB Pendrive.
I assume it was fake. Whatever data was copied into it, it would just show folders and folders of zeroes in it!
I checked up the Transcend forums, and they said it was an issue with fake Transcend drives. I never could come to a conclusion though. I just assumed the drive to be a fake one. What they probably do is make cheap pen drives which do not even amount to 40% of their advertised storage space...
In my case, I could not even fill up more than 400 mb on my so called 2GB pen drive! :rofl: So if I tried to store some data exceeding that amount, it'd all get corrupted....

Even formatting it was of no help! :(
I finally had to chuck it..
 
doh, fake drives??? heh

also the "eject" point is likely... make sure after you copy the file and the copy dialog closes, wait for a few minutes, then eject, then reattach and check the file...

and try disabling "write behind caching" for some safety but little lower performance, should be somewhere in device manager for your hard disk or controller entry... im in ubuntu right now and cant recall exactly where...
 
Yes, the wrongful eject is a good possibility. But I think he would have checked this. Also, it's more likely that the file does not get materialized at all in the FAT when an unsafe eject occurs.
 
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