Ever seen this problem with a hard drive?

[Gerard Morentzy]

Beginning a couple of days ago, I have been unable to get rid of - something - on an external hard drive. It's a 500GB WD MyBook. A look at the drive in Explorer shows the Recycle Bin as empty. Trying to delete the Recycle Bin says there is nothing to delete. But anytime I try to do an erase of any kind using ERASER (or any wiping tool) I get the following report:

Statistics:

Erased area = 0 bytes

Cluster tips = 0 bytes



Data written = 0 bytes

Write time = 0.00 s

Failures:
Failed: G:\RECYCLED\ (The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.)
Failed: G:\RECYCLED\ sg1 (The system cannot find the file specified.)
Failed: G:\RECYCLED\¼÷-sD (The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.)
Failed: G:\RECYCLED\ sG2 (The system cannot find the file specified.)

Complete with symbols and all. I have done a free-space wipe using ERASER and another using CyberScrub. I have zeroed out the free space using Restoration and manually deleted all 'deleted entries' using WinHex. Still, WinHex, Directory Snoop and Restoration show entries (the same as the ones in the report) that are not deleted, yet there are no signs of these bizarre phantom files anywhere. I always show hidden files and folders. Erasing the recycle bin continues to give me the error message above. I'm usually pretty good at troubleshooting these things - but I am stumped. Can anyone help?

[markymoo]

There is bit of advice on Kelly Korners for problemactic Recyclin bin.

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_qr.htm

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,
Boot into a live CD environment (BartPE, any NTFS-capable Linux).
Then examine what's there. If this is real data or a glitch.
Mrk

[Gerard Morentzy]

Thanks guys....I ended up fixing the problem by actually using a registry hack to delete the recycle bin completely and then it's auto-restored on restart. I used a registry patch found at the Five-Star Support site. I put it away after using it - handy to have.

Thanks again for the responses, Have a good week!