External Drive Missing Data?

Raggaholic

I have a Seagate 1.5TB Freeagent external drive. Recently, I moved a bunch of files from my netbook to the external drive so that I could do a fresh install of Windows 7 (had to go from beta to XP to 7). In this move, I moved over my Pictures folder which contained about 25GB worth of pics and video. Things got delayed a bit, and I wasn't able to upgrade as quick as I liked. Total, the pics/video were on the drive for about 3 weeks.

Now, I went to access the drive and a bunch of the data is gone. When I say a bunch, only 5GB remains. The drive isn't full (300+GB empty), but my files aren't there. No one else has had any access to the drive and I know that I didn't delete them. I have no clue what could have happened, though. The files aren't hidden, and it doesn't seem to be a large increase in free space (although I have to admit I never really paid too much attention to free space).

Any idea at what's going on here?

Ruckus

How long was the drive connected to the PC after you 'finished' copying the files over, and when it was removed did you just unplug it or did you remove it in the Safely Remove Hardware dialogue?

UncleSporky

Did you confirm that the files were copied after copying them by actually opening a file off the external? Perhaps more than once over the course of the weeks?

Did you copy manually by dragging folders, or use some sort of backup wizard? A program might compress it all into one file.

Have you tried looking at the external on a different computer, perhaps a Linux one that wouldn't arbitrarily hide anything from you?

try running SpaceMonger which will show you visually where large concentrations of files are.

If you can't find anything then I am inclined to believe that the files never were on the hard drive, and you accidentally copied a shortcut only, or copied the wrong folder, or to the wrong location (not the external).

Raggaholic

How long was the drive connected to the PC after you 'finished' copying the files over, and when it was removed did you just unplug it or did you remove it in the Safely Remove Hardware dialogue?

The drive was connected for the rest of the night. When I removed it, though, I did just unplug it.

Did you confirm that the files were copied after copying them by actually opening a file off the external? Perhaps more than once over the course of the weeks?

Yes. I accessed the files multiple times, once even just to see how much was actually there (that's how I knew it was just over 26GB). I looked at specific pictures even to see when certain things happened by viewing the "taken on" date.

Did you copy manually by dragging folders, or use some sort of backup wizard?

Drag and drop.

Have you tried looking at the external on a different computer, perhaps a Linux one that wouldn't arbitrarily hide anything from you?

I haven't done this. I'll try it today.

EggyToast

I had this happen on a drive once. I used a "disk repair" program that was able to find the files and restore them, correcting whatever error was on the drive at the same time. I can't recommend a program name because it was on OS X, but I was VERY happy with the program. Essentially it was a significant step up from the standard disk utility tools in the OS, with a focus on restoring "lost" data -- data lost not from deleting or erasing, but from disk errors.

In my case I stopped using the drive, as it was relatively old and I figured it was the first sign of it going bad (it happened 3-4 times before I stopped using it). Given the size of your drive I get the impression it's relatively new, but if it happens again you might want to drop a note to Seagate. The last time I had a problem with a seagate drive they were really good about replacing it.

Raggaholic

Have you tried looking at the external on a different computer, perhaps a Linux one that wouldn't arbitrarily hide anything from you?

I just tried this. The other computer is reading it the same. The folder only has 5GB in it.

Kobo

It sounds like you may have not succeeded in placing all of those pictures, for whatever reason, on the external. Depending on what you've done on the drive during and since your windows 7 install, you may be able to recover some data.

If you have another system available, slave the drive that you just put W7 onto into the other system and use a data recovery program to rebuild the index on the drive. You will probably have a hard time figuring out what is there since it will probably not be in folders and it will not be named well. At least you're only looking for one file type. Hopefully you can get some pictures back but if they've been overwritten since they were wiped, they're gone.

finalflight89

I've had good luck recovering lost files with Recuva, a free Windows tool to do just that. Although as Kobo said, if the files got overwritten, then there's really not much you can do.

Raggaholic

Kobo wrote: »

It sounds like you may have not succeeded in placing all of those pictures, for whatever reason, on the external.

They were definitely there. I accessed them multiple times after the transfer. I guess I can only try the recovery route.