I swapped ext HDs while in standby, now the wrong files show up

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Director665

New Member
While my XP media center laptop was in standby mode, I removed the external lacie250GB hard drive connected via USB (Drive F: 'resources') and replaced it with my other same hard drive (Drive E: 'Project Files') to the cables (same USB port) I took the computer out of stand by. At the desktop I opened 'My Computer' and saw Drive E labelled 'Resources' I clicked on the Drive E icon and got a list showing some folders that are on Drive F. I restarted the laptop. Upon getting to the desktop from the intro screen, a diaolg box popped up with "Bad Log File Drive E:" I clicked 'OK' and the laptop froze. After waiting 5 or 6 minutes, I did a hard restart with Drive E turned off. Laptop restarted, I turned on Drive E. No usual initialization, just showed up same as above. Part of the file structure from Drive F is there, but no files are shown. I also tried another USB port to no avail. How do I get drive E back to 'Project Files' as it was? I'm fairly nervous about this as one could imagine.

Other notes:
The laptop had been in standby for awhile, I just needed something off the other HD. Since they are the same exact type of drive, I connected the Project Files drive to the Resources drive's cables and turned on the swapped drive then took the laptop out of standby. I am usually very careful about how I handle the drives, but in this case, Windows came out of standby and just accepted the fact that the other drive was still there, not checking for any changes. When I restarted the computer, XP must have written the MFT? information from the Resources HD to the Project Files HD. However, the disk space indicator looks correct for what the Project Files disk has on it and one major folder that should have been listed as part of the Resource HD is not showing (Could be because The Resource HD is full, this one has about 60 GB left) I tried 'rescan disks' in disk management to no avail. I ran Norton Disk Doctor and it showed problems with the file structure. Under details it recommended deleting a lot of 'orphan and corrupt file records' (I did not check the 'fix' box so no changes were made) I appreciate very much your time in helping.
 
Not having worked with external drives quite yet you could try connecting the drives identically the way they were when you first started using them on the same usb ports as well. XP makes a small record of drive information as hardware is detected and files are moved around somewhat.

A full drive doesn't usually stop proper detection and reading of what is on it. But you would have to move files off of it maybe delete some to gain full access again.
 
I am under the impression that the one mistake made was the removal of these drives while the laptop was running even in standby mode. Even with the low current seen on a usb bus data not hardware was probably damaged or now missing that would allow Windows to readily access either drive. If you don't see a fast fix the use of a live Linux distro for file copying may be the way to save files from the drives there.
 
actually, I think there were several mistakes made leading up to this problem. I swapped the hard drive while the laptop was in standby, which I thought was safe to do, then I turned on the drive before bringing the laptop out of standby, had I turned on the drive afterwards windows would have seen the drive missing coming out of standby and reinitialized the new one when I turned it back on. The big mistake was letting windows restart with the drive still on while in it's state of confusion. I believe the process of shutting down for the restart is where the directory information from the other drive was written to the replaced drive, thus messing up the hard drive's ability to initialize the contents on the drive. is there a way to have the drive rescan itself and rebuild the directory structure?
 
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