Folder/File size larger than physical disk...

[The_Shooter]

Well ok, while at work, I came upon this problem...

The customer wanted me to backup his documents (3.16GB) and reinstall XP on his computer.
I put his drive onto our shops computer to back it up. Well I ended up putting his data onto his 2nd partition because it was just short of 200MB from fitting on the shops computer.
After that, I reinstalled XP onto the 1st partition and went to bring his data back.
Well the original backup size was 3.16GB and now its 24.2GB! The partition is ONLY 10GB...
I look at what the crap went wrong and see random folder/file names like $!@,_.
What the heck happened between installing XP and this... (btw, its a FAT32 partition.)
Anyways, I call up another tech to discuss this and he said that there is prolly bad sectors. We talked about 30 min about it.
So I shut down the machine afterwards and come back to it 20 min later when the other tech came in. I booted it up, it would not detect the drive (didnt touch it or move any wires.). I turned the power off and then back on. It did detect the 2nd time.

Anyways, after that, it took nearly 20 min before it would boot (took way too long!) Then the drive basically died...
BTW, Has anyone had any success with freezing in the freezer to get the HD to get data off?

Here is an Screenshot of the issue....
www.sempervictrix.com/zack/pics/ghost.jpg

[rpertusio]

putting the drive in the freezer causes some of the parts inside the drive to 'shrink', making it sometimes possible to retrieve data. However, as the drive returns to room temperature, it will fail again, so it isn't meant to be a permanent solution, if it works at all.

Have you run any diagnostic utilities (from the HD manufacturer) to confirm an error code or anything like that?

It is a strange coincidence that the drive happened to 'die' while you had it in your posession. Are there any strange power fluctuations (voltages, etc) that may have caused the drive to 'fail' in the first place?

- rp

[The_Shooter]

Prior to the re-installation of XP, there was frequent BSOD screens. It would happen at random times.
Also, his only case fan was so bad that it would not turn much at all. And I live in eastern WA where it gets very warm during the summer.

edit: I am not 100% sure its dead. It still powers up, it does get detected sometimes, but it lags out both his own machine and our shop computer.

[The_Shooter]

Has anyone ever experienced this?
I did a screen shot of it.
www.sempervictrix.com/zack/pics/ghost.jpg