I just installed a Seagate 320GB PATA drive I bought from Scan, and it's full with 298GB of .par files in 95 folders labelled DIR00000 to DIR00095 in a folder called video. What's going on? Have I been sold a customer return?
Printable View
I just installed a Seagate 320GB PATA drive I bought from Scan, and it's full with 298GB of .par files in 95 folders labelled DIR00000 to DIR00095 in a folder called video. What's going on? Have I been sold a customer return?
Hmm thats doesnt seem right, the drive should not even be formatted should it? Every drive I have bought (Maxtor, Seagate, WD) has always needed formating before I can even use it.
Mike
That's what I assumed. Of course I could format it, but I'm concerned at owning what appears to be a second hand drive crammed with fragments of someone else's files. I'm going to check the file attributes of a few.
They all have a modification date of 4th October 2006!
Certainly doesn't sound like it's fresh from the factory...
! Thats not like scan at all ! Sounds like a mixup to me!
Ruggerbugger
I already advised you when i spoke to you on the phone this drive was brand new from our suppliers and we would be taking it up with them.
Wesley
What is the manufacture date of the drive? That might shed some light on the situation....
(purely speculative on my part, Scan are already dealing with it)
I wouldn't! At least not without the consent of Scan
To be honest, those files could be simply a left over from the drive testing, they certainly resemble recovered file fragments. It's even possible that Windows created them on your first instalation of the drive when it formated it.
298GB of .par files? seems very odd, those are just used as repair files for quickpar. Why there would be nearly a full hard drives worth is very peculiar indeed.
Someone must have put them there as there is no way they could have accidently ended up on it without human intervention.
When you download from Usenet and newsgroups etc the archive normally contains par files which are used to repair damaged files. You wont get them from anywhere else.
Nickp.
Yup, par or par2 files are a recovery file used to repair part or missing files on big downloads like dvds, and such like.
Most popular with newsgroup downloads, and usually involve illegally downloaded software/movies.
Dont worry though, someone will be bending over backwards to sort it out!
Was it in a sealed plastic wrapper the hard drive?
Goto manufacturers website, and check its warranty with the serial number, it will give lots of info on the drive, regarding age and so on.
Google search of course. :O_o1::innocent:
Nickp.
While .Par files are usually used for newsgroup repairs under windows, par is actually short for Parity.
It is perfectly possible that this is a left over from the manufactures testing on the drive. No one would keep a drive full of .par files - They are useless on their own. The fact that the directory names are also non-sense also add weight to this.
The only thing that's puzzling me is the the mentioning of a 'video' directory. I cant see why a HD manufacture would use this.
Whats the manufacture date of the drive?
possible for the drive to be RMA'd by someone before and seagate just refurbished it and put it with the new stock? If it is, then thats a pretty big issue to bring up :).