Hard Drive Files vanished

wellwish3r

wishes wells.
Reaction score
52
I know this sounds like im a retard, but it seriously happened. I got a new 500GB HDD, and copied about 50GBs on it two days ago. Today i copied another ~220GBs on there, shut down the computer, and plugged the HDD into my laptop. Any file organizing i did after copying the 220GBs is gone, most (not all for some reason) and most of the 220GBs of data is gone as well.
When plugging it back into my desktop, i can't see those files either, so they just seem to have disappeared.
But the really weird thing is, that the computer still tells me that 283GBs of the HDD are used up, eventhough the files that are still shown are only roughly 65GBs in size. I cant find those "ghost" 200GBs anywhere on the hardrive, and searching for vanished files doesnt yield a result either.

So my question, what is going on and can I restore those files somehow (cause i allready deleted them from my PC...)

OS: Win7 Ultimate x64
 

Nenad

~Choco Coronet~ Omnomnom
Reaction score
137
Organize->Folder and Search Options->Second Tab->Show hidden files, folders etc. Make them unhidden :thup:
 

AnthraxXx

New Member
Reaction score
25
I have a feeling they aren't hidden.

This happened to my PSP memory stick, I had 1GB of nothing on there, I managed to fix it.

You say the external is NEW, right? Well, format it. Either with eXFAT, Fat32 or NTFS. A quick format will do. It should work then.

You should always format new USB's, HDD's etc when you get them.

Hope this helped.

EDIT: I re-read your post and found you wanted to recover those files... You may want to try using a program called "Recuva" (It's free) or "Undelete". However, I suspect the files on the HDD are corrupted, so I would not be surprised if they are lost forever.
 

wellwish3r

wishes wells.
Reaction score
52
The files are not hidden and i did format the HDD before i used it. The problem with restoring the old files to the Recycle Bin is that i didnt actually delete them, I moved the directly onto the new HDD. They all worked fine until i shut down the PC (the normal way).

What still dont understand is why the HDD got basically "reseted" to how it was 24hrs prior to when i copied the files over, even things that i deleted are restored, more or less like the HDD restored itself to that point.

Ill try Recuva anyways, since it probably wont do any more harm...
 

DDRtists

ɹoʇɐɹǝpoɯ ɹǝdns
Reaction score
415
System restore fixes everything

System Restore doesn't touch anything file related other than your Program Files. In other words, your music, documents, pictures, ect. will not be restored or saved. It doesn't touch your MyDocuments folder.
 

wellwish3r

wishes wells.
Reaction score
52
The files are not hidden and i did format the HDD before i used it. The problem with restoring the old files to the Recycle Bin is that i didnt actually delete them, I moved the directly onto the new HDD. They all worked fine until i shut down the PC (the normal way).

What still dont understand is why the HDD got basically "reseted" to how it was 24hrs prior to when i copied the files over, even things that i deleted are restored, more or less like the HDD restored itself to that point.

Ill try Recuva anyways, since it probably wont do any more harm...

EDIT: Recuva found nothing...
 

Prometheus

Everything is mutable; nothing is sacred
Reaction score
591
If you format, go with NTFS. Anything else is just older tech.
 

Ensabahnur

New Member
Reaction score
4
I suggest searching for the files on both hard drives, do you know the name of one of them, you can use * as a wild card.
 
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