I'm totally stumped on this.

I'm running Windows 7 64bit, I have a 1.5TB external RAID that I keep all my media on. Tonight I went to pirate a movie and realized that both my "MOVIES" and "TV SHOWS" folders were gone. These folders account for the majority of the data on the drive. It's four or five years worth of pirating every single thing I watched (no Netflix for me). Absolutely nothing else is missing, just these two folders that were at the route of the drive. The weird thing is that the data still appears to be accounted for...

Says 1.02 TB are in use...




Yet the two biggest folders are missing, the remaining three only comprising 296GB...



(the movies folder only has one movie in it that I restored from the Recycle Bin during my futile efforts to find the files)


Show Hidden Files is checked in Folder Options, as is the option to always show all folders in the navigation pane. I ran System File Checker as if it would help and it found nothing. I searched other areas of my computer and the files weren't accidentally moved elsewhere. I've restarted multiple times. It's not in the Recycle Bin. Everything looks good in disk management.

Any ideas? I haven't backed this up in almost a year. It will suck to have to download every episode of Beavis and Butthead again, that took forever...

First: Do not write any more data to the drive.

I am going to guess that this is some type of MFT (master file table) error. The file entries have been deleted or corrupted in the table but the data is still there. You run the chance of overwriting the movies and tv shows if you save anything else to the drive.

My first instinct is to try an undelete program to view the drive to determine if any data is salvage. If you can see the data then try to restore 1 file to another disk.

If this works then proceed with restoring all the others.

I have used R Studio in the past with success.

http://www.r-studio.com/

I might be able to point you in the direction of a full copy. PM if interested.

I'm not certain, but I think if it were bad file tables, then the reported space utilization of the disk wouldn't show as big. I might try something like WinDirStat to find where the disk is keeping the largest files.

Tried WinDirStat, no luck. When I choose the drive to analyze it says it is 75% full, but after analyzing it only shows the ~300GB that I'm already able to access in Explorer. Says nothing about the 700GB unaccounted for.

Currently running Recover My Files from GetData, I've used it before with success but it's not looking good so far. Ran a "deleted data" recovery, it found nothing. Now running a "lost files" search, we'll see how it goes.

"
I recently had a case of Directories showing zero bytes yet the drive properties still showed many GigiBytes of data. I recovered the files just by booting up a Live version of Linux (PC Linux in this case). It could see all the files that Windows could not. See here for a list of Live Linux CDs: http://www.frozent...content/livecd.php
"

That was a brilliant idea, VV, but no luck. Booted up an Ubuntu disc and it was the same exact problem.

The scan I did with the data recovery software was of no use, either.

About to give up. At least it wasn't any critical data, but it's still really curious how it was JUST my downloaded movies and TV shows. Absolutely nothing else on the disk disappeared. I'm more frustrated about not being able to figure this out than I am about the data itself.

I know this will sound stupid, but have you checked the recycle bin? Windows thinks the data is still there, it's just a matter of finding it. Since the data is there a recovery program doesn't see any problems.

If that doesn't work:

- Go into the properties of the drive and look under previous versions. See if anything got stored there.

- Make sure you are showing all hidden files and folders.

- Give yourself rights to the System Volume Information folder and look in there.

Recycle bin and system folders were the first places I checked, and I always have hidden folders shown. Whatever the answer is it probably isn't as obvious as one would hope.

Have you tried moving the window to a different area of the screen and looking again? You may have accidentally applied some White-Out to the screen so it just looks like there's nothing there.

Your parallel thinking (and sharp wit) is appreciated, but alas, this is not the case

Data is probably long gone at this point, but just out of curiosity; did you check the system logs to see if there was an event that might have set this off? What you describe just seems so odd.

I checked everything, there was nothing to indicate what had happened. I have a six month old backup that has a decent amount of what was missing, gonna reformat the hard drive and copy it all over when I have a few hours to spare.

Some programs like windows media player or even utorrent can delete files directly. For example, windows media player can be set to "delete from my library and my computer" and set so it doesn't "ask me before deleting files." utorrent and other file downloaders have similar quirks so I always move downloads to different folders.

I'm just throwing out ideas.

Posted by TheVicariousVadder Some programs like windows media player or even utorrent can delete files directly. For example, windows media player can be set to "delete from my library and my computer" and set so it doesn't "ask me before deleting files." utorrent and other file downloaders have similar quirks so I always move downloads to different folders. I'm just throwing out ideas.

The thing is if the data were properly deleted then it should either be in the recycle bin or the space would have been freed up. The hard disk seems to think it's there, but it's not. I wonder if this is what limbo is like?

Posted by willskith The thing is if the data were properly deleted then it should either be in the recycle bin or the space would have been freed up. The hard disk seems to think it's there, but it's not. I wonder if this is what limbo is like?

Things that are too big for the recycle bin usually skip it. It's interesting to say the least. It sounds like what happens when you delete images from a memory card in camera, the file pointers to memory allocations are deleted but the data is still there.

Run a chkdsk with NO OPTIONS so it is in read only mode. Just "chkdsk D:", change D as required.

If it finds errors then running it with /F might help, but you can't go back if it screws up. If it is possible make a sector copy of the drive first.

More interesting is if chkdsk finds no errors. That means your files are still there, just hidden or locked out by ACLs.