Missing files in seagate external hard drive?
When I checked my EHD last night, all of my folders were missing except for one. This one folder (TV series) also has missing files. I ran chkdsk and nothing happened. A friend of mine told me to run cmd and key in attrib -h -r -s /s /d J:\*.* and it was successful. The other missing folders were recovered and were all placed in one nameless folder (although some of the files went to a subfolder named "$RECYCLE.BIN"). Now my problem is that the missing contents of the TV series folder were not recovered, but the folder properties show that it has the same number of files in it. What can I do to recover the files? Can you give me a link of a working data recovery software? Also, if I transfer the contents of the $RECYCLE.BIN to another folder in my EHD, will it cause any trouble?
My external hard drive files are missing?
External hard drives formatted to NTFS [the default for Windows XP onwards] need to use the "Safely Remove Hardware" function to ensure data is not lost or the drive becomes corrupted. This is because they use disk caching to speed the file transfers. If you reformat the drive to FAT 32 [used by most USB Flash drives] than you can unplug the drive without using the Safely Remove Hardware option, without fear of losing your files. If you use FAT32 though, the drive will copy files more slowly and you will have single file size limit of 4GB. It sounds like although you have got away with just unplugging it in the past, that this time the drive has become corrupted and may need to be reformatted to use again. You can try and use a free recovery tool like Recuva to see if can get your files or at least some of them back: http://www.piriform.com/recuva Running a defrag as another answer suggested will not help you at all in this case. The reason your friends Mac cannot read the disk at all is because Mac OSX uses a different file system to Windows and can't read a drive formatted as NTFS [which yours is] If Recuva can not get your files back and they are that important to you [you should always keep at least one back up of important files] then you may get the files back by using a proffessional recovery firm who have other methods involving taking the drive apart physically in a clean room. But these firms are not cheap and may charge you a significant amount to recover your data. Kroll Ontrack is one firm that offers this service but they are not cheap: http://www.krollontrack.co.uk/
Why am I missing GB on my hard drive?
This may sound like a stupid question but I just can't figure it out. I have a 455 gb hard drive on my computer. It is my main hard drive that holds my OS, which is Vista Ultimate 32 bit. When I open "my computer" it says that I have 300 gb free out of 455. I do have a partition of 10 gb, which shows up on a separate drive path. When I open my main drive I see all of my folders and I do have the ability to see my hidden files, but when I select all of the files and click on properties I only come up with 55.8 gb of disk space is used. So, doing the math, if I add the 55 gb of used space to the 300 gb of free space, that adds up to 355 gb, but my hard drive is 455 gb, so where am I missing 100gb of space?
Sounds like your drive is failing due to physical errors. Try plugging it into a Linux system or create a live Linux usb/cd and boot to that. I have been able to bring drives back from the dead using Linux. If you are not familiar with Linux, Ubuntu is a good choice (http://www.ubuntu.com/). You might have to do some command line gymnastics depending on the severity of the errors.
Missing Folders/Files From WD External Hard Drive?
With external drives, there is a scenario where you can lose files/folders without explicitly deleting them. I use Windows-XP Pro and I have a Western Digital USB external drive that I bought about 6 months ago, and I have experienced this problem a few times. Here is a possible reason for that problem. Inside Disk Properties for your hard-drives, Hardware tab -> Properties, Policies Tab, there is a Check-box labelled 'Enable write cache on the disk'. You really want to uncheck this box for your external drive. If you always use the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon (that Windows put on the Quick Lauch Bar the first time you pull a USB connected device off), you will be told sometimes that you can't disconnect your external hard-drive yet. When that happens to me, I shut down my PC first, then wait for my external drive to turn itself off (with an audible click), before I disconnect or turn off its power. Assuming you had Disk Cache enabled for your external drive, it is possible that your USB drive was disconnected or powered off before Windows copies the cached files back to your external drive. You can try to run Scan-disk (Disk Properties: Tool tab: Error-checking option, Check Disk button, check 'Automatically fix file system errors', Start.) This may restore the 'lost' files/folders back to your external drive. I haven't seen a Windows Help that says this would help, but theoretically it can hurt. I would like to hear about how it goes.
My hard drive is missing!!!?
Here's the skinny. Yesterday I installed Windows 7. Before doing so I use SyncBack 3.2.19.0 Free to backup my entire My Documents folder to a Freedom9 freeStor Mini 210 80GB external hard drive. The backup produced no errors, the files looked in tact, I was secure in the knowledge my 72GB of documents, pictures and music data was secure and safely unplugged the drive. I then used GParted to get rid of all the extraneous partitions on my main hard drive and started fresh. I installed Windows 7 Pro without a hitch. Then I plugged the drive back in to copy my files back and it won't show up! Windows is recognizing that something is plugged in. The FreeStor Mini shows up in Device Stage. If I go to Computer Management/Storage/Disk Management the drive shows up without a drive letter saying there's 74.53GB of Unallocated space! When I right-click on it I only get options to create a new volume (Simple, Stripped, Spanned, and Mirrored)! What the hell happened!?! Is all my data gone? Is Windows just not recognizing the drive properly? This is 12 years of documents, music and pictures GONE! How do I get it back? PLEASE HELP!
In Device Manager, external drives may be found under Hard Drives, or under USB devices.In the Disk Manager, most external drives (USB or FireWire) will usually be present. Some will stubbornly fail to show up, e.g., SD cards in mobile phones, because they are peripherals to the phone, not the computer.
Is this normal?? Maxtor External Hard Drive missing more than 34 GBs?
Yep, that's normal. If you're a knowledgeable computer user, then you know that a gigabyte contains 1,073,741,824 bytes. But if you look on the package that your hard drive came in, you'll notice something, usually in really small print, that says 1 gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 bytes. For your 500Gb drive, that's a difference of 36,870,912,000 bytes, or roughly 35 gigabytes, leaving you with roughly 465 gigabytes of usable space. And if that's not bad enough, many advertisers will round up a smaller number to a larger number. So, a drive which is actually 450 gigabytes, may be calculated for advertising purposes as 483 gigabytes, and then rounded up to 500 gigabytes. Not all manufacturers do this, but lately it seems that most do. If you really need 500 Gig, then you'll have to pay close attention to the fine print, and buy from reputable dealers and websites. Many websites do not even note the actual drive size in their sales listings. The practice started in the 1980s (or even before) with the 3.5" floppy discs, which supposedly were rated as 1.44Mb, but were actually 1.37 megabytes.
Try using easeus partition managerEaseUS Partition Master Free 12.5
All hard drives have some code on them that is put there by the manufacturer. Think of that code functioning like a name badge. During the boot-up procedure the BIOS (Basic In Out System) checks out the entire computer to see what all is attached and whether or not “drivers” are available for all the things that are attached. At some point during the process the BIOS sends out a call for all the attached hard drives to “report” themselves. In the case that you are asking about the hard drive either 1) never gets the request (because the hard drive's receiving circuits have failed) or 2) the hard drive got the request but cannot comply because either it's response circuits have failed or the identifying (name badge) data that was recorded on the hard drive has been deleted or otherwise corrupted. So… the BIOS never gets a reply to its inquiry. When the BIOS doesn't get a reply, it duityfully reports that the hard drive is missing. Yes, the hard drive is still right where it has always been, but if it isn't able to “report” itself…it is “dead” and of no use to the rest of the computer. Once a hard drive fails to report itself it has failed in such a way as to be useless. Any data that might be on it can only be recovered by special techniques that usually cost over $1,000! There is a free utility called “Crystal Disk Info” (Google it) that you can download and install on your computer. When you “run” the utility it will exam in your hard drive(s) and tell you how many total hours of use they have had and whether or not the drive is beginning to fail. Most hard drives give a little warning before they die. Hard drives are usually expected to last for 30,000 to 45,000 hours. You need to replace them BEFORE they die so you can transfer all the stuff that's on them to a new drive. Remember… once the drive fails to report itself… your stuff on it is GONE!