Cannot Access Harddisk

[WI_Hedgehog]

Wow, it worked! I tried using the rm command and was able to delete some data on my disk. Now I can access my disk normally through Windows Explorer. Thanks to everyone who helped me solve this problem.

That's good, really good, really really good in fact, though you also want to get your system out of this situation quickly. When your pool (or drive) is over 80% full (75% when using ZFS) it's really, really hard on drive(s) and they tend to fail much more quickly. Since they're usually older drives (which is how they got to the point of "full") this often means "they're gonna fail soon."

The reason has to do with long head sweeps from one end of the disk to another when writing data at the end of the disk and then recording where that data is stored at the middle and beginning of the disk. Heads may also jump around a lot when looking for small open areas to store data on. Think of it like writing data sequentially in one hop, then two more hops to record where it's stored--that's nice. Now think of a full drive looking for free space like a drunk banging around the apartment at 3AM trying to find where his bedroom is, unsuccessfully; you wake up on the morning and trip over him passed out in the hallway, one leg stuck up on the wall and some not-fully-chewed pepperoni drooled on the carpet.