JPEGs have all been renamed

jhudson1977 · 01-25-2008, 08:36 PM

Hello everyone........unfortunately my first post on this forum is of a problematic nature.

I have an external HDD that I use to back up my computer with. An older backup (1.5 ago) has quite a few pictures on it that I wanted to copy to my current computer. Unfortunately, I saw that all of the files had been renamed to *$@.jpg.

The computer recognizes them has a .jpg and has left that extension intact but has added the $@ to the file name. When I try to open it I get something about the file being corrupted. The interesting thing is that if I take the files to another computer......they open fine and the name does not have the $@ symbols in it.

I have not tried using another computer to recopy the files to see if that fixes it as there are 7,000 some odd pictures. I wanted to run this by the forum to see if anyone else has seen this. The backup that I did was with Windows XP and I'm using XP now as well. I'm at a loss.

Any advice?

***Darthtanion*** · 01-26-2008, 12:49 AM

Do you have the latest service pack installed on the machine with the so-called file corruption issues? I know I have had problems in the past with larger hard drives (over 137GB) when using them without the new SP installed on an XP box. Since it cannot properly address the entire amount of drive space, it does funny things with the data. This would be my first guess since it is similar to issues I have had in the past.

jhudson1977 · 01-26-2008, 01:40 AM

I had not read about this.........without checking my computer I'm going to have to say no I don't have the latest SP installed. However, my computer's setup to install all the updates automatically but, we know how things like that work.

I'll check it out and let you know.

jhudson1977 · 01-27-2008, 01:07 AM

It struck me later on that you might have meant SP2 for XP.....yes that has been installed for quite a while on my machine. I double checked all the updates anyways and everything is up to date.

***Darthtanion*** · 01-27-2008, 05:05 AM

Then you might try another USB port for your external hard drive to see if that is where the problem lies. It could be a bad USB port or it could be a muffed driver install for your mainboard. If the data is fine on another computer, then you have at least narrowed the issues down.

jhudson1977 · 01-30-2008, 12:28 AM

I guess I had my facts mixed up. The actual backup was what corrupted the files. I found the HDD that contained the original pics, plugged it in and found all of the pictures just fine. Then I remembered why I backed up the pictures. The HDD that they WERE on (they are now safe on another HDD) starts clicking and scratching after about five to ten minutes of use. So, I grabbed everything off of that drive while I had a chance.

Now, it's in my pile of "I'm keeping this because I want something to show the grandkids". This is where I also have a couple of 5.25's, punch cards, 8.5's, etc....

***Darthtanion*** · 01-30-2008, 06:48 AM

Well, it is good that you have your data safe and secure.