Strange files being created on my PC, advice please

happyhero

Hi I have a Medion PC about 5 years old plus and it has a removeable 1Tb drive on the top aswell as a SSD C drive inside. It is not the same as any other drive so I could not get any other one to take its place easily. I store all my work on this drive and for a while now it has been going to sleep and not waking up.

So for example I have a load of Excel files on this drive amongst other stuff and sometimes when I open Excel and ask it to open a file it keeps trying before giving me a message. Basically it can't find the file because the drive is not waking up/spinning. To sort this out I ask Excel to open the file and if I see its struggling, I remove the drive(I believe it said in the book you can hot swap it or something) and immediately plug it back in (connecting it back to all its power and data connectors). You then hear it start up and the file comes up on my PC. Restarting the PC would wake it up to but obviously that is a lot more effort. If I am working on the file for a while sometimes it wont save so I have to do my unplug - plug back in trick and then it saves. If its only a short while it will still be working and other times it just works, probably about 60% plus of the time it just works.

Anyway recently I lost a file on this drive and I'm wondering if all this hot swapping/plugging in and out may have damaged the file. Luckily I back up often but still I could lose stuff as I don't back up every 5 minutes.

After I lost the file I noticed some odd files in the folder that only has Excel files, so they stood out. I cannot do anything with these files and the PC asks me what program I want to use to open them as it doesn't know. The files names are 1FD95D40 & A098FA30 & D2A44A00, etc etc.

I'm guessing that my file was damaged and these are remenants of it, I suppose unuseable. I cannot seem to do anything with them.

Do you think these are what I say they are?

If not what are they?

Can I do anything with them?

Could I get the drive to stay awake permanently, if so how?

Its a bit noisey to keep running but if I could wake it up and send it to sleep at will I suppose that could work, it isn't great unplugging and plugging back in all the time.

I have AVG virus protection and do regular checks and Malware Bytes too.

Any advice/help appreciated.

Le_Kirk

Next time you are able to gain access to your files BACK UP!

debitcardmayhem

what version of Windows do you run? And what is the model number of the Medion

inspectorperez

Can't answer your question happyhero, but I'm posting just to say I have exactly the same set up as you.

Medion 1TB hard drive desktop with 1TB external Medion hard drive which sits on top of the desktop.

I use this through the Windows file backup system each day (incremental) and it has worked perfectly since I purchased the equipment over 5 years ago.

Easy to use storage management is part of the process and I still have 400GB+ spare capacity on both drives

Heedtheadvice

Surely hot swapping (no need to power down) and unplugging in the middle of an operation.....is not the same thing?

Neil_Jones

happyhero said:

Anyway recently I lost a file on this drive and I'm wondering if all this hot swapping/plugging in and out may have damaged the file. Luckily I back up often but still I could lose stuff as I don't back up every 5 minutes.

After I lost the file I noticed some odd files in the folder that only has Excel files, so they stood out. I cannot do anything with these files and the PC asks me what program I want to use to open them as it doesn't know. The files names are 1FD95D40 & A098FA30 & D2A44A00, etc etc.

I'm guessing that my file was damaged and these are remenants of it, I suppose unuseable. I cannot seem to do anything with them.

I think you've got your terminology mixed up.  To hot plug basically means plug it in without having to power off/restart the computer and it'll work.  A cold plug means the computer has to be powered off/restarted before the computer will see it and you can use it.

The situation to which you've described is usually caused because you're not stopping the drive before unplugging it, you're just pulling it out.  An icon comes up on the taskbar when you connect it and if you hover over it you can "stop" the device before you unplug it.

pbartlett

Although of course I cannot be certain, it looks like you might have a failure on the swappable drive.

Either buy a replacement Medion drive, or buy an external USB-connected 1TB drive and copy everything from the Medion drive to the new one. Stop using the old Medion drive and only use the new one.