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I have a Seagate freeagent external hard drive which I just bought and
it has a problem.

I created a couple of folders on it and then backed up about 8 GB of
data to it, with compression enabled on the destination folder. At
some point, the destination folder disappeared but there is still 6GB
of data on the disk - I just can't see any of it - the name of the
folder containing it all does not appear in the parent folder. When I
try to delete the parent folder (it is called 'backups') I get an
error
'cannot delete folder "System Volume Information" - access denied'.

I've tried rebooting but it made no difference. (using Win XP pro).

Is it possible to reformat the external hard drive ? Any other
suggestions ?

Thanks

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:38:05 +1200, darkknight <> wrote:

>
>I have a Seagate freeagent external hard drive which I just bought and
>it has a problem.
>
>I created a couple of folders on it and then backed up about 8 GB of
>data to it, with compression enabled on the destination folder. At
>some point, the destination folder disappeared but there is still 6GB
>of data on the disk - I just can't see any of it - the name of the
>folder containing it all does not appear in the parent folder. When I
>try to delete the parent folder (it is called 'backups') I get an
>error
>'cannot delete folder "System Volume Information" - access denied'.
>
>I've tried rebooting but it made no difference. (using Win XP pro).
>
>Is it possible to reformat the external hard drive ? Any other
>suggestions ?
>
>Thanks



Mine has the Same File you can't delete it as its read only and a system file..


It was there from the start Zero bytes..

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:38:05 +1200, darkknight
<> wrote:

>
>I have a Seagate freeagent external hard drive which I just bought and
>it has a problem.
>
>I created a couple of folders on it and then backed up about 8 GB of
>data to it, with compression enabled on the destination folder. At
>some point, the destination folder disappeared but there is still 6GB
>of data on the disk - I just can't see any of it - the name of the
>folder containing it all does not appear in the parent folder. When I
>try to delete the parent folder (it is called 'backups') I get an
>error
>'cannot delete folder "System Volume Information" - access denied'.
>
>I've tried rebooting but it made no difference. (using Win XP pro).
>
>Is it possible to reformat the external hard drive ? Any other
>suggestions ?
>
>Thanks


Replying to myself.

chkdsk found no errors on the new drive and after turning on "show
system folders" my lost folder reappeared - somehow Windows decided to
make my (compressed) folder a system folder as well - so now I've
deleted all its subfolders and I'm just left with "System Volume
Information" which I believe is associated with system restore and can
apparently be deleted by temporarily turning off system restore - but
I don't want to do that coz all restore points are lost.

Now I just need some backup software that knows not to backup things
like Sys Volume Info and doesn't rely on the archive attribute...

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 22:06:29 +1200, Greg House <
wrote:

>On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:38:05 +1200, darkknight <> wrote:
>
>>
>>I have a Seagate freeagent external hard drive which I just bought and
>>it has a problem.
>>
>>I created a couple of folders on it and then backed up about 8 GB of
>>data to it, with compression enabled on the destination folder. At
>>some point, the destination folder disappeared but there is still 6GB
>>of data on the disk - I just can't see any of it - the name of the
>>folder containing it all does not appear in the parent folder. When I
>>try to delete the parent folder (it is called 'backups') I get an
>>error
>>'cannot delete folder "System Volume Information" - access denied'.
>>
>>I've tried rebooting but it made no difference. (using Win XP pro).
>>
>>Is it possible to reformat the external hard drive ? Any other
>>suggestions ?
>>
>>Thanks
>
>
>
>Mine has the Same File you can't delete it as its read only and a system file..
>
>
>It was there from the start Zero bytes..

My external hard drive has one of these in the root too but the one
I'm trying to delete is in a subfolder - it got copied there from C
drive during a backup.

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:38:05 +1200, darkknight <> wrote:

>
>I have a Seagate freeagent external hard drive which I just bought and
>it has a problem.
>
>I created a couple of folders on it and then backed up about 8 GB of
>data to it, with compression enabled on the destination folder. At
>some point, the destination folder disappeared but there is still 6GB
>of data on the disk - I just can't see any of it - the name of the
>folder containing it all does not appear in the parent folder. When I
>try to delete the parent folder (it is called 'backups') I get an
>error
>'cannot delete folder "System Volume Information" - access denied'.
>
>I've tried rebooting but it made no difference. (using Win XP pro).
>
>Is it possible to reformat the external hard drive ? Any other
>suggestions ?
>
>Thanks



This is a suggestion reported, but was quoted that it does not work with a USB Drive.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309531

My drive is formatted NTFS

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:38:05 +1200, darkknight <> wrote:

>
>I have a Seagate freeagent external hard drive which I just bought and
>it has a problem.
>
>I created a couple of folders on it and then backed up about 8 GB of
>data to it, with compression enabled on the destination folder. At
>some point, the destination folder disappeared but there is still 6GB
>of data on the disk - I just can't see any of it - the name of the
>folder containing it all does not appear in the parent folder. When I
>try to delete the parent folder (it is called 'backups') I get an
>error
>'cannot delete folder "System Volume Information" - access denied'.
>
>I've tried rebooting but it made no difference. (using Win XP pro).
>
>Is it possible to reformat the external hard drive ? Any other
>suggestions ?
>
>Thanks



Here are 2 links but one was quoted that it does not work with a USB Drive.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309531


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421




My drive is formatted NTFS

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:38:05 +1200, darkknight <> wrote:

>
>I have a Seagate freeagent external hard drive which I just bought and
>it has a problem.
>
>I created a couple of folders on it and then backed up about 8 GB of
>data to it, with compression enabled on the destination folder. At
>some point, the destination folder disappeared but there is still 6GB
>of data on the disk - I just can't see any of it - the name of the
>folder containing it all does not appear in the parent folder. When I
>try to delete the parent folder (it is called 'backups') I get an
>error
>'cannot delete folder "System Volume Information" - access denied'.
>
>I've tried rebooting but it made no difference. (using Win XP pro).
>
>Is it possible to reformat the external hard drive ? Any other
>suggestions ?
>
>Thanks



Here are 2 links but one was quoted that it does not work with a USB Drive.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309531


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421


One more


http://bertk.mvps.org/html/tips.html#SRFileLocation



My drive is formatted NTFS

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 22:47:22 +1200, Greg House <
wrote:

>On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:38:05 +1200, darkknight <> wrote:
>
>>
>>I have a Seagate freeagent external hard drive which I just bought and
>>it has a problem.
>>
>>I created a couple of folders on it and then backed up about 8 GB of
>>data to it, with compression enabled on the destination folder. At
>>some point, the destination folder disappeared but there is still 6GB
>>of data on the disk - I just can't see any of it - the name of the
>>folder containing it all does not appear in the parent folder. When I
>>try to delete the parent folder (it is called 'backups') I get an
>>error
>>'cannot delete folder "System Volume Information" - access denied'.
>>
>>I've tried rebooting but it made no difference. (using Win XP pro).
>>
>>Is it possible to reformat the external hard drive ? Any other
>>suggestions ?
>>
>>Thanks
>
>
>
>Here are 2 links but one was quoted that it does not work with a USB Drive.
>
>http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309531
>
>
>http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421
>
>
>One more
>
>
>http://bertk.mvps.org/html/tips.html#SRFileLocation
>
>
>
>My drive is formatted NTFS


For some reason the folder properties dialog doesn't show a security
tab (even on C drive) so those MS support suggestions don't work for
me, but thanks.

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:38:05 +1200, darkknight <> wrote:

>
>I have a Seagate freeagent external hard drive which I just bought and
>it has a problem.
>
>I created a couple of folders on it and then backed up about 8 GB of
>data to it, with compression enabled on the destination folder. At
>some point, the destination folder disappeared but there is still 6GB
>of data on the disk - I just can't see any of it - the name of the
>folder containing it all does not appear in the parent folder. When I
>try to delete the parent folder (it is called 'backups') I get an
>error
>'cannot delete folder "System Volume Information" - access denied'.
>
>I've tried rebooting but it made no difference. (using Win XP pro).
>
>Is it possible to reformat the external hard drive ? Any other
>suggestions ?
>
>Thanks



If you can't get XP to format the drive use this HP USB format tool.

http://www.docjelly.com/Blog/content/binary/SP27213.exe

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:38:05 +1200, darkknight <> wrote:

>
>I have a Seagate freeagent external hard drive which I just bought and
>it has a problem.
>
>I created a couple of folders on it and then backed up about 8 GB of
>data to it, with compression enabled on the destination folder. At
>some point, the destination folder disappeared but there is still 6GB
>of data on the disk - I just can't see any of it - the name of the
>folder containing it all does not appear in the parent folder. When I
>try to delete the parent folder (it is called 'backups') I get an
>error
>'cannot delete folder "System Volume Information" - access denied'.
>
>I've tried rebooting but it made no difference. (using Win XP pro).
>
>Is it possible to reformat the external hard drive ? Any other
>suggestions ?
>
>Thanks



If you can't get XP to format the drive use this HP USB format tool.

http://www.docjelly.com/Blog/content/binary/SP27213.exe

Find that is the older verion, here is a newer one..


http://h50178.www5.hp.com/support/PB...cal_17550.html




And even a much later one with added features have not tried this one..

ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/se...ZIP/HPUSBF.exe