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corymoore Author

Level 1

8 points

Disappearing files on external hard drive?

Hey guys,

I'm new to this forum here, but I really need some insight into a huge problem I am having as of late.

I'm running a Macbook Pro, and have a Seagate External Hard Drive connected to it.

On the drive I have tons of movies, tons of music, and a bunch of photography.

About a week ago I noticed that one of the folders with my photography was empty. None of the hard drive space was changed, but upon opening the folder it contained no files, they had disappeared.

Now two days ago, I went to open up the expansion drive, and ALL of the files had disappeared. But again, no space on the hard drive has changed.

Weirdly enough, all of my music I have on that external i had previously added to my itunes library. When I open up itunes, I can play all my music, but when I open up the expansion drive, they have all disappeard ?!

I searched everywhere for an answer to this issue online but have not found anything to help me.

I'm a photographer and I have some major projects on there I need to get finished. If anyone could help me with this, I would be forever grateful !

Thank you !

MacBook Pro

Posted on Aug 3, 2011 8:40 PM

Best reply

Justin Paul Reese

Level 5

4,240 points

Posted on Jan 20, 2016 10:38 AM

The case of the disappearing files occurs with all kinds of external hard drives, regardless of format.

I'm running a hard drive recovery on my FW800 G-Drive 2TB, and so far, after a day of scanning, it's discovered 5.8GB of missing data.

I've lost several files. This seems to be an issue with OS X and needs to be addressed immediately. I've already submitted a Feedback on Apple's website.

*edit*

After doing a web search, a LOT of people are having these problems.

View in context

22 replies

May 6, 2016 6:44 AM in response to corymoore

I had the very same issue with Seagate plus 2TB which was formatted in NTFS.

All of a sudden around 800GB of data disappeared. The folder shows 0 bytes on disk.

Disk utility on Mac didn't report any errors.

This is what worked for me to completely recover the entire data.

Plug the hard drive into windows PC.

Windows popped up a message saying that there are problems with the disk and should be fixed.

Go ahead and allow windows to scan and fix the errors(looks like file indexes are messed up but Not bad sectors though).

Poof. All my data can be accessed post fix.

Jul 20, 2016 8:06 AM in response to corymoore

Same problem here. Strangely that's the third time this happened to one of my NTFS HDs, and it's always a folder containing images that suddenly gets empty. Wonder if it's something related to Preview in finder, but there's definitely something wrong with the Mac OS...

Windows is usually the solution to fix this.

ramarg

Level 1

4 points

Sep 23, 2016 3:16 PM in response to badboy.therock

Thank you very much @badboytherock for the solution you suggested.. This really helped with this common problem (about dissapearing files) from hard disk drives. Until now, i thought that the problem was caused by the macos (because i always use hdd with ntfs format in order to access my files from both windows and macos. Finally i realised that the problem with the directories and lost files that can't even been deleted is caused by the mounting programm you installed in order to write on your ntfs drive in macos. The bad news is that this bug cannot be prevented, but can be resolved in windows os. You simply plug the drive with the missing files and press the scan and repair (on the pop up window that appears when you connect your hdd drive). On a drive with 380gb of files it took over 3,5 hours to finish the process but in the end the files were back into place ! So follow this method and the solution is almost sure. Keep in mind also that files may be dissapear after unexpected disconection of your drive. So always eject the drive before disconect it and change the cable if it's faulty and causes disconnection. Thanks again for the help.

nossuom

Level 1

4 points

Oct 13, 2016 3:03 PM in response to ramarg

Hi, ramarg,

I have pretty much the same problem: NTFS Samsung 2TB external drive, writable in Mac OS Sierra only after some command lines (http://macdrug.com/write-ntfs-drive-macos-sierra/).

After dragging an empty Google Drive folder from desktop to one of the external drive's folders, ALL of its content (1TB of all my life's pictures, etc.) IMMEDIATELY vanished. When I click on the "Get Info" tab after right-clicking on the folder where the missing files were, it says there is no space being used!

I am using Wondersahre Data Recovery all day long, it has been detecting a huge ammount of files, but all of them are being renamed and apparently out of their original directories.

I will only have access to a Windows PC tomorrow.

My question is: can I try to recover them with Wondershare Data Recovery?

Will this affect the "scan and reapir" utility in Windows, once I plug the external drive on it tomorrow?

Thanks a lot for the attention, I'm quite desperate.

nossuom

Level 1

4 points

Oct 13, 2016 3:05 PM in response to badboy.therock

Hi, badboy.therock,

I have pretty much the same problem: NTFS Samsung 2TB external drive, writable in Mac OS Sierra only after some command lines (http://macdrug.com/write-ntfs-drive-macos-sierra/).

I am using Wondersahre Data Recovery all day long, it has been detecting a huge ammount of files, but all of them are being renamed and apparently out of their original directories.

I will only have access to a Windows PC tomorrow.

My question is: can I try to recover them with Wondershare Data Recovery?

Will this affect the "scan and repair" utility in Windows, once I plug the external drive on it tomorrow?

Thanks a lot for the attention, I'm quite desperate.