Harddrive corruption on Home Cinema PC ?

["Dean Barrett" <dean@xxxxxxxxx>]

I've never had a harddrive get corrupted before - plenty of physical
failures, but not one that keeps getting errors.

Its a new 250gig drive which is holding my DVD VOB's - all worked fine for
a
few months, then one day no files - and just a do you want to format the
drive warning ?

I did a media tools low level scan thing hoping to see all the files (about
150gigs worth) - but could only locate 3 directories, the rest were totally
lost...

I formatted drive rented loads of the same DVDs :) - and re-installed, just
gone back to machine, and again files have gone, but not all of them - i
can
see the directories but it tells me to chkdsk them, and wont show any
files.
But newer files i put on there more recently are available ??

Can you corrupt a harddrive by copying to it ? - I rip the DVD's on one
machine and they copy them over the network when done - can this mess up
the
drive ?

What is the best way of backing up the harddrive ? - my current solution is
to rip the DVD, and then make a DVDR backup of it. - this makes it a long
job - tape backup seems way to dear for home use and doesnt seem to come
close to size of drive at sensible price - my next idea is another USB
connected 300gig drive and make a copy of each dvd to this as well - all
seems a bit long winded to me.

Any suggestions appreciated.



Dean.



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