Yesterday my desktop PC started spamming me with Hard Disk failure error windows, saying it lost access to part of the OS or something, and while it gives me the options to scan the disk or do it later, the first does nothing and the second restarts the computer.

The PC is also constantly working and very slow and a lot of folders on my hard disk are not shown anymore and those in My Documents all come up as empty. I know that at least part of the stuff is still there though because if I search for certain programs or games that sit in the vanished folders (with the Explorer or the Start Menu search), I can still locate and start them. The search isn't able to find all specific files, but that may also be due to its general inefficiency (usually I hardly use these search functions because my experience taught me not to trust them). Strangely enough, all files in the Program Files folder are still there and accesible.

Another thing that's strange is that the quickstart icons from the taskbar are not displayed anymore and all the options usually found on the right side of Vista's Start Menu are gone, too.

I'm not really sure if all this is caused by a genuine hard disk defect (the hard disk was pretty full, only about 15 gb of free space left) or if it's just a malware attack messing with my system (I've read about similar symptoms in connection with a trojan). In any case, I can't access the most important data anymore, that is my personal documents and my savegames. I have a decent amount of my personal documents backed up on other media, I think, but I haven't done it systematically and I might lose some more or less important stuff nevertheless. And losing the savegames of RPGs and adventures I already spent countless hours with would be pretty annoying, too. I don't think I could bring myself to replay them, so I would miss out on their endings.

Any idea what I could do? I've thought about letting a professional have a look at it, but I can't really afford to pay much more than $100 dollar for it and the prices for saving your personal data from a defective hard disk seem pretty high for a private person with low income (even 200-600 or in some case more than $1000). Not sure if it's worth it. :(

why throw away money to let someone do stuff what you can do yourself?

first check for malware and stuff. http://www.malwarebytes.org/

If the drive is readable (as in, it doesn't make any odd noises), the first thing I would do is make an image of it (with ddrescue) then do any research/recovery on the image.

The next few consist of panic, severe liquor problems and mental depression.

In my case, the steps are:

1) Get mail telling me a drive has failed
2) Continue using the machine
3) Replace the drive at some point in the near future

Yay for RAID1 :)

Sounds like a drive is failing. Try recovering what you can onto other media if possible(Buy a new HDD even and ghost a copy of the drive's contents to it if you can as a new drive shouldn't be too much if it's not super huge in size.). :\

I'd also start copying data you can't afford to lose onto smaller media like DVDs/flash drives/etc.....like documents and game saves. That way if you do lose the whole drive and find out later when imaging the drive that it can't be recovered and.or it fails completely later on you will still have some data saved.(Especially your saves, which you want to keep.)RAID is a good way to backup data but I find it stupid if on a budget to buy two disks for the same purpose...especially at current prices. Plus on smaller towers space can be an issue(Unless you go the external route, but even that has problems like slow speeds on USB connection and/or refurbished drives sold as new externals.)

Did that already. It gave out some false alerts and something with "Hijack" and "StartMenu" in it. I moved everything in quarantine, but it didn't change anything. I have to admit though the database of my Ant-Malware is one year old already and when I tried to update it, I got an error message. Spybot didn't find anything. I also tried system recovery, which in hindsight was probably a dumb move since it failed and might have increased the risk of losing my data. Another dumb move was uninstalling a huge game to give the system more space, in deleting it, it might have overwritten some of my stuff. And I ran I prog called "Unhide.exe" which made the icons reappear but after a restart they were gone once again.

I might try to create a bootable Linux disc at the house of a friend tomorrow and see if that changes anything. If it's just a trojan hiding stuff, booting with a different system should give me access to the hard disk again, shouldn't it? If I still can't see the folders, I gues the hard disk is defective.

I've skipped panic and mental depression this time, I've been there too often (and din't learn anything), so I replaced them with fatalism and resignation. ;) If I can't save my data, I guess I'll just have to live it and be more careful next time.

Sometimes malware can mess with Malwarebytes......i'd run in safe mode, delete malwarebytes and reinstall, then update it and run it(all in safe mode). In safe mode many viruses/etc can't run well or at all, and this will hopefully allow you to update and run MWB without issue if malware is causing it to not work right.

Yeah, I forgot to mention that in safe mode I don't get any error messages. But I still can't access the missing folders and the start menu is missing its options, too. But in case the issue is really the hard disk and not malware, deleting and reinstalling Anti-Malwarebytes would further endager my data, wouldn't it?

Yes. Also windows itself can be broken, but using an external system and backup all your stuff don't change anything on the hd. For that reason it's always good to have a bootable linux distribution lying around for a quick-check and dirty backups.

Edit: Btw, you can also make a bootable usb-stick. I guess your sitting at the moment on another pc without a cd-burner?

I recall a certain malware that would make all folders hidden and then create a copy of itself with the folder's name, which when clicked would open the folder. Did you try checking if this is the case with the folders? Since it is quite possible that this (or another) malware will prevent you from toggling the "Show Hidden Files and Folders", open a command prompt, go to the directory your folders should be in (for example, c:\users\leroux\documents) and do a "dir /ah" which should show you all hidden files and folders.
Btw, what is the error message when you try to update malwarebytes?

Well you see safe mode would look the same as normal mode(without the folders) because you didn't "fix" the problem yet. If it is malware the best way to get rid of it/check is to do all your fixes and running of the pc(until you're 100% sure it's ok) in safe mode, THEN go back to using normal mode. If it is a malware issue, going back to normal mode before getting rid of all of it permanently will possibly lead to it reinfecting everything it did before all over again.

Also I don't think deleting such a small app would put much strain on your HDD, even if it is a hdd problem. And if malwarebytes has been infected it's the only way to be sure you have a clean malwarebytes install.

Unfortunately it's only my netbook and it doesn't have a cd drive. :(
I could download and copy stuff to my USB stick though.

RAID is by no means a backup. It's simply there to reduce the inconvenience of a drive failing (to nearly zero) :) It's quite possible for the other drive to fail while it is rebuilding - at which point, my actual backups would be mobilised to remedy the situation! Depends how you look at it. At the most basic, all disks are brought for the same purpose (storing data). The purpose of buying a second disk is to allow redundancy, which the first can't do alone.

Whether it is worth it or not (on any budget) depends on how valuable it is to *you* that your machine stay working following disk failure. As nearly everything I do revolves around my computers, it is very worth it to me! Though I admit, it was technically free, as the RAIDed drives in my desktop were spare from my server storage upgrade :)

The problem may not be a mechanical failure, but a software one, making writing anything to the drive, even a "small delete" really dangerous. If the file information is corrupted, that "small file" may be pointing at random parts of a whole bunch of other files where deleting it would corrupt those too. The chances of it being this sort of corruption is considerable due to the symptoms (random directories being inaccessible).

The very first step in any possible drive related issue is to stop anything writing to the drive!