Really Strange Hd Issue In Windows Xp

[Mike's 2thick]

HI Everyone,

I am a big fan of the show and that made me think that this may be the place to ask about a very weird issue with my External HD. I had re-installed XP recently and find right afterwords my HD would no longer be recognized by Windows.

I have tried changing the USB cable and Power Supply but it just is not recognizable. I tried on 3 different computers and no luck. After about 30 seconds XP freezes until I unplug the HD.

The strange part is that I can use the HD when using my Cinematube HD media player. All my files are there and I can stream the Audio and Video fine. I have lost any way to transfer files from the HS. SO, basically it will always just be what is not there no and no more.

Can anyone think of a way for me to at least somehow get the HD recognizable to transfer material off it?

Thanks

[digip]

Is your XP fully up to date with all hotfixes and patches applied(SP2, SP3, etc)? Sometimes windows device drivers get corrupted too, and they are a bitch to fix sometimes, but you could try running the system file checker (SFC) to see if anything is out of whack. Its hit or miss with it, and if you pick the wrong option to do it on boot, can end up in a loop somethings. Check the documentation on http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/system_file_checker.mspx?mfr=true .

Few things to check though before messing with system files. 1, make sure autorun is disabled for all external media like USB drives and CD-Roms. Its possible something is on there that tries to run or install as soon as you plug it in and is crashing or causing an issue. 2, its also possible there is malware on the drive and the malware itself is trying to run when you plug it in or causing an issue. Just somethings to consider.

You could however, try booting the Windows XP PC off a live linux cd/dvd like uBuntu. uBuntu is free, and should allow you to mount the HDD and USB drive to copy stuff off. Boot uBuntu first, then plugin the USB HDD. Linux should see and mount it automatically. You can browse the file system to look at both the USB drive and the workstations HDD. Then copy the files over to the main PC HDD using the file manager. Once you get all of the files backed up to the main PC, format the USB drive as NTFS, using either linux, or another windows machine, then copy them back onto the drive as needed and you should be good to go.

[Mike's 2thick]

Is your XP fully up to date with all hotfixes and patches applied(SP2, SP3, etc)? Sometimes windows device drivers get corrupted too, and they are a bitch to fix sometimes, but you could try running the system file checker (SFC) to see if anything is out of whack. Its hit or miss with it, and if you pick the wrong option to do it on boot, can end up in a loop somethings. Check the documentation on http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/system_file_checker.mspx?mfr=true .

Few things to check though before messing with system files. 1, make sure autorun is disabled for all external media like USB drives and CD-Roms. Its possible something is on there that tries to run or install as soon as you plug it in and is crashing or causing an issue. 2, its also possible there is malware on the drive and the malware itself is trying to run when you plug it in or causing an issue. Just somethings to consider.

You could however, try booting the Windows XP PC off a live linux cd/dvd like uBuntu. uBuntu is free, and should allow you to mount the HDD and USB drive to copy stuff off. Boot uBuntu first, then plugin the USB HDD. Linux should see and mount it automatically. You can browse the file system to look at both the USB drive and the workstations HDD. Then copy the files over to the main PC HDD using the file manager. Once you get all of the files backed up to the main PC, format the USB drive as NTFS, using either linux, or another windows machine, then copy them back onto the drive as needed and you should be good to go.

Thanks Digip for the idea.

Yes all my computers are up to date. I made sure of that. I will give uBuntu a try. I will psot if it works for me.

[vdub]

I am wonder what is on that drive because the Alfa USB wifi adapter is say $40 so I am interested to see the cost justification for such a simple attack method. Really the pineapple will eventually be able to do it, maybe not as effectively due to the tx power but it is on the list.

The Alfa adapter shown I don't think natively works in Linux so that may be the benefit of the drive having a custom kernel but all speculation on my past. Just fire up wash on your mon0 see who is WPS enabled then run reaver it is actually much simpler than a wep attack just a lot slower when both are done correctly.

Just an assumption, maybe the distro on the usb checks the mac address of the included wifi adapter so people can't make copy's;-)

Its more then likely a bad drive.

Try with the drive plugged in to boot to parted magic or some other Linux live distro and try and mount it from there. Linux can be a lot more forgiving when it comes to hard drive errors. I had a system a few days ago that had 10 years worth of pictures that some lady had not backed up. I could not even run chkdks in the recovery console it was so bad. I booted up in to parted magic and was able to get all of her data back.