Faulty drive or XP problem?

I'm currently in the middle of changing broadband providers so decided to do
a fresh install of XP Home during the downtime. My machine is an XP2200 and
has a 120gb Western Digital primary HDD and a 40gb secondary Western Digital
HDD.

I copied various folders (MP3s, My Documents, etc) to the secondary drive
before formatting the 120gb drive. The 40gb drive was now practically
full...only 3gb remaining. Then I reinstalled XP Home on the primary which
went fine.

When I got back to the desktop and went into Windows Explorer to copy back
the folders odd things started to happen. If I click on the MP3 folder to
try and copy in back, I get an error "unable to access D:\MP3". The same
happens with the other folders I copied over. What is strange is that these
are not the only folders on the drive - infact there is a "Downloads" folder
(which has been there for the duration I've had the drive) where I download
everything to...and files and subfolders in there are readable and intact
and I can copy these files to the primary drive without problem.

I've run a scandisk on the secondary drive and it reported no errors. Also
if I check the properties of the drive it's still showing 37gb out of 40gb
used...so it appears the files are there but I just can't see them.

Before I formatted the drive, it had XP Home along with all updates
but as I'm changing broadband providers, I have no internet access
currently so it's a non-updated XP Home that is on the drive -
could this be why I can't see/copy my files?

Any ideas as to how I can get my files back, or a disk recovery program that
could sort this out? Suggestions appreciated.

spriter wrote in message
news:BC97377B.E5FD%greatbigholeinthegroundNOSPAM@h otmail.com...

I'm currently in the middle of changing broadband providers so
decided to do a fresh install of XP Home during the downtime.
My machine is an XP2200 and has a 120gb Western Digital
primary HDD and a 40gb secondary Western Digital HDD.

I copied various folders (MP3s, My Documents, etc) to
the secondary drive before formatting the 120gb drive.

Using what, just plain XP Explorer etc ?

The 40gb drive was now practically full...only 3gb remaining.
Then I reinstalled XP Home on the primary which went fine.

When I got back to the desktop and went into Windows Explorer to copy
back the folders odd things started to happen. If I click on the MP3 folder
to try and copy in back, I get an error "unable to access D:\MP3". The
same happens with the other folders I copied over. What is strange is that
these are not the only folders on the drive - infact there is a "Downloads"
folder (which has been there for the duration I've had the drive) where I
download everything to...and files and subfolders in there are readable
and intact and I can copy these files to the primary drive without problem.

Most likely its just a permissions problem. Those copied folders
werent done using the same account that you're now using to
copy them back, so you dont have permission to read them now.

Just do the copy using the admin account.

I've run a scandisk on the secondary drive and it reported no errors.

So there cant be any fundamental problem with
the physical drive or the directory structures etc.

Also if I check the properties of the drive it's still showing 37gb out of
40gb used...so it appears the files are there but I just can't see them.

Likely because the account you are using to look at the drive with
doesnt have permission to view those folders and their contents now.

Before I formatted the drive, it had XP Home along with all
updates but as I'm changing broadband providers, I have no
internet access currently so it's a non-updated XP Home that
is on the drive - could this be why I can't see/copy my files?

Nope.

Any ideas as to how I can get my files back,

Try doing it from the admin account.

or a disk recovery program that could sort this out? Suggestions appreciated.