Retrieve Lost Files?

[lily1029]

I use a 4TB external hard drive to save all of my shows that record through media center. Last night I came in and discovered that it had just deleted half of itself! This is a tragically huge amount of things lost as it was almost full. Has this happened to anyone else before and does anyone know of a way to retrieve these files back? I stopped recording anything more on to it after I discovered the loss and I'm slowly going to work through and try to figure out what all is missing in case this helps. Any advice would be much appreciated or condolences if I'm just screwed would be nice too.

[adam1991]

What do you mean "it had just deleted half of itself"?

[lily1029]

I mean I was no where near my computer and now it shows 1.82TB free instead of the only 19GB that should have been free. I had this puppy packed to the gills and now those files are just gone. No clue how this happened or why but that is about 2TB of data that just disappeared.

[ZippyTheChicken]

DO NOT WRITE ANY MORE SHOWS TO THAT DRIVE..
if you do you give up any chance of recovering the files

there are some recovery products out there you can try
Recuva is pretty good for free.. there are others that cost money.

First thing I would do is copy everything you can now see off the drive
then
Try to recover the files you lost

After that I would not trust the drive
Sucks but you're probably going to need to buy a new one
Check SlickDeals and FatWallet for deals.. some 5TB Externals are going for $120 after rebate now
Personally I like the Western Digital Externals over the Seagates but no matter who you buy from you can get a good one or a bad one.

Good Luck

[Space]

Other than a bad disk or a malicious program on your system, the only other thing I can think of that would delete that many shows at once would be if you had the "Keep" setting for those shows set to "1 Week" or "Until I watch" (assuming you watched those shows recently) or for a Series have "Keep up to XX recordings" set. I believe a setting of "Until space needed" will also delete shows, but I don't think it will delete a whole bunch of shows at once (although I have never used this setting, so I don't know how it works).

You can check what each recording is set to (and change it), by selecting the recording and going to the "Actions" screen and selecting "Keep Until", change any show that you want to keep to "Keep until I Delete" (it not set already).

You can make any future recording set to "Keep until I Delete" automatically by making it the default:
settings->TV->Recorder->Recording Defaults

Here is how I have my setting so that nothing is deleted unless I manually delete it:

General recording defaults:
Keep: Until I Delete

Series only recording defaults:
Keep up to: As many as possible

[STC]

Is it NTFS? There are many NTFS partition table recovery and tools out there including native tools built in to Windows. It could simply be a corrupt table which is like an index in a book. The index is referenced to know what is where.

[lily1029]

Update - I did stop using the drive immediately and started making a list of everything that was gone in case nothing could be saved. I then copied the remaining files onto a brand new external hard drive and downloaded the free version of Recuva. It is still running the recovery but it found the files immediately and it appears to be rescuing them all for me. I did it all in one giant chunk in case I only got one shot at it (anyone with experience know if I could have done smaller batches?). I think it had to be an issue with the "keep" settings as you suggested Space. I have been bouncing between several drives lately to store things and it must have done me in somehow. Fingers crossed that it all finishes up fine but if so I would give a strong thumbs up to Recuva!!

[adam1991]

yeah, just as I thought initially. They didn't "just disappear". WMC didn't do anything to them.

[lily1029]

Well adam I still feel they did disappear without reason as I was not in the process of swapping drives when it happened. It most likely is a fluke due to my regular bouncing around between drives but it is quite strange for it to happen on an evening when I'm not messing with things. I'm all for helpful advice and information that can help me learn but your remarks are simply meant to make a board newbie feel like an idiot.

[Scallica]

In Recorded TV, select "View Scheduled" and then select History. If WMC automatically deleted the shows, there will be a log entry.

[adam1991]

Well adam I still feel they did disappear without reason as I was not in the process of swapping drives when it happened. It most likely is a fluke due to my regular bouncing around between drives but it is quite strange for it to happen on an evening when I'm not messing with things. I'm all for helpful advice and information that can help me learn but your remarks are simply meant to make a board newbie feel like an idiot.

That wasn't my intention, but anyone with enough savvy to use WMC and swap drives around should know better than to come into a place like this and say "they just disappeared" without any explanation of your influence on the system.

[STC]

I lost some recordings from my recording drive once. It was the table, which was repaired and I was able to recover the files. I haven't had another problem since which has been a few years.