Justin B asked:
I recently bought an external HD, new, and it should be empty – but something is happening that has me in doubt. Of the 200G only186 is available, that in and of itself didnt bother me, but when I transfered the files in bulk to it I was watching the transfer and something odd started happening. In the middle of all my regular files flashing by it changed from transfering “Switch” to “Switch” to transfer “_” to “_” and files that I have never seen before, could not locate, and after completing the entire transfer could not locate in Any drive “_” nonwithstanding started flying by.
I formated, reformated, tried again, and it happened again. I searched and researched for the same keywords but I cant find these anywhere. The only thing bouncing in my head at this point is that there is some sort of hidden, nonformatable section of a drive somewhere that is harboring files that I am transfering. Suggestions?
I recently bought an external HD, new, and it should be empty – but something is happening that has me in doubt. Of the 200G only186 is available, that in and of itself didnt bother me, but when I transfered the files in bulk to it I was watching the transfer and something odd started happening. In the middle of all my regular files flashing by it changed from transfering “Switch” to “Switch” to transfer “_” to “_” and files that I have never seen before, could not locate, and after completing the entire transfer could not locate in Any drive “_” nonwithstanding started flying by.
I formated, reformated, tried again, and it happened again. I searched and researched for the same keywords but I cant find these anywhere. The only thing bouncing in my head at this point is that there is some sort of hidden, nonformatable section of a drive somewhere that is harboring files that I am transfering. Suggestions?
Wow, your powers of deduction are great!
Most Corporate/OEM computer makers follow the 1999 ATA6 standard, and make up to 4 hidden partitions, one for remote administration (customer service remote restoration of the system), one for a corporate OS image, one for the drivers and corporate settings, and the last is the actual, real, but hidden, partition map.
A Microsoft format of those drives doesn’t affect them. If you want to view them, erase them, re-format them, you need to run any of these: Linux FDisk, GParted, or QTParted.
I prefer and hit the install icon. It runs the script, until you back out or stop the process.