Disappearing files on external hard drive?

[corymoore]

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 disappeared ?!


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 !

 

[chscag]

I'm wondering if somehow the files on your Seagate external drive are "hidden". It would be rather bizarre that it could have happened by itself but I've seen stranger things happen....

Try this to see if the files on the drive are hidden:

Launch Applications/Utilities/Terminal and enter:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
press enter

Note: That will show hidden files everywhere. But we just want to see if the files on your external are hidden. So this will be temporary. Let us know if you can see all the missing files on the external drive.

To negate the above command and hide files again:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
press enter

 

[corymoore]

Hey thanks for the reply.

I just tried that and nothing changed.

It is really weird that this happened all of a sudden, i mean for the past 3 months it has been fine and never had this happen. Started with one folder and then the whole thing, but yet all my music on that external hard drive is added to itunes and still plays?

Also tried the disk utility but it will not let me select Verify or Repair at all, actually it never has even when it was working.

Hopefully we can figure this out ! Thank you

 

[RavingMac]

Out of curiosity, do your photos still show in iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom (whichever APP you use) and can you open them for Editing?

This entire thing is weird, but if the answer above is yes I would immediately:
1) Export them to another drive so I have a backup (if you don't already)
2) Quit using your current drive for work, or backup (or anything else for that matter) until this is solved--if for no other reason that you may want to try file recovery software and you don't want to overwrite your files
3) Get a backup strategy and stick to it if you don't have one

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/sw...official-backup-faq-start-backing-up-now.html

Hope everything turns out well for you.

 

[chscag]

Also tried the disk utility but it will not let me select Verify or Repair at all, actually it never has even when it was working.

I wish I knew that when you first posted your message. Do what Razormac suggested above. It does sound very much like that drive has problems and could be getting ready to fail altogether.

 

[alliznelle]

did you ever figure out this problem, or resolve your files? i am a photographer too, and having a nearly identical problem - also with a seagate HD

 

[Brick House Mom]

I am having a similar problem. A large file I had been working on for 2-3 hours (stored on a Seagate Backup Plus External Drive) suddenly disappeared. I mean it literally disappeared as I was working on it. I tried accessing other files on the drive, and nothing would appear. I then decided to click on the Finder icon at the bottom of my screen and “relaunch finder” was my only option. So, I did.

How is this possible? I thought it was just a fluke, that maybe I had done something wrong. So, I decided to transfer another copy of that file (stored on another external hard drive) back on the Seagate. After three long hours (the file was really large) and being nearly finished transferring, it suddenly stopped. The folder was there and showed a size of 12KB, but there were no files inside the folder.

The strange thing is that the folders/files that are appearing show only using half (approximately 300 GB) of the storage space used (600 GB) on the external drive. My seagate is 3 TB. Hidden files account for approximately 400 KB.

I really would like to retrieve the file I was working on as it has photos on it. I do have a backup of the file, however, I spent a good deal of time organizing and deleting duplicates. Any suggestions?

Forgot to mention…this Seagate Backup Plus 3TB Ext. Hard Drive is BRAND NEW!

 

[matchfit]

Any solution? This happened to me just now. I have an Iomega External Drive. All folders are fine except... Photos! :{

 

[midoudream]

Same thing here, an IOMEGA HELIUM 1 TB folders disappeared from external hard drive but the space is still occupied ! i'm on a macbookpro using yosemite (just in case).
I checked with Data Rescue, the files are still inside, but it's somthing like 900 Gb that i'll need to rename and re-organise. I would prefer to find another way to bring back the folders...
Thanks

 

[chouston33]

Had this same issue and I installed Tuxera NTFS for Mac and verified and repaired my hard drive in disk utility twice. I think you can use a Windows to repair the disk as well

 

[lclev]

It would be interesting to know 1. what version of OS X everyone is using, and 2. what file system the drives were set to use, NTFS, Mac OS extended, exFAT? Just to see if there is a commonality occurring here.

Lisa

 

[Slydude]

Good question Lisa. I've seen reports like that from some folks using third-party NTFS software such as Tuxera which is why I switched to the Paragon driver.

If the drives are formatted HFS+ (Mac Formatted). I wouldn't use Windows utilities on them without knowing more about the underlying cause of the problem. First, it is not likely to recognize the drive. Second, it is likely to cause more data loss or other problems.

Guys check the formatting on your problem drives as Lisa suggester. I had one recently with this behavior and it was showing as RAW rather than HFS or NTFS>

 

[yose.putra]

Same problem

I have the same problem with my external hard drive.
I'm currently running Mac OS X V 10.9.4

I have 3 external hard drive which the 3 of them are suffering the same thing.
1) Seagate 500GB (NTFS format), all files are missing.
2) Toshiba 1TB (NTFS), 1 folder gone.
3) Seagate 1TB (NTFS) 1 folder gone.

This same thing happened to all 3 my hard drive. and I never had this problem before in my life using this 3 hard drive. (works perfectly)

I started to notice the disappearance when I created a new folder, then all of the files in current folder are missing (notice the disk space are still the same as before).
I've tried to download some data recovering software and still can detect all my data.
But the problem is, I have to purchase them if I want to recover it. (only free to scan)
I don't really want to spend some money just to recover once and never to use that software again.

Is any of you have some solution for this kind of problem?

 

[bobtomay]

What driver are you using for write access to those NTFS volumes?

 

[KoEd]

what about this...

I've tried showing hidden files. i drug the broken folder over to my desktop, which then showed as a folder instead of a piece of paper, but alas it was empty. *cue broken heart... any ideas of how to fix this?? i checked the format too, its formatted for mac.

 

[Rod]

Hi KoEd, welcome to these forums. You have added to an old thread last contributed to on the 13/02/2015.
So my first option would be to check the permissions for the folder just in case they have changed (see Sharing and Permissions on the above windows). You should have Read/Write privileges. The next thing to try would be a free data recovery app such as Disk Drill http://www.cleverfiles.com/ If you have no success with this then you may as well try repairing the volume with Disk Utility First Aid (in the Utilities folder in Application folder) because you most certainly have lost the contents of your folder but you never know. This could be due to corruption of the external HD or mechanical failure.
How old is the Seagate? I do not have one in use any more but I'm told they can be unreliable.
Do you still have the original file?