I have a pretty bizarre problem with my 350GB AData Hard Drive, FAT format. I'm using Windows 7 (which apparently is known to have problems with USB HDDs). Okay, so here's the story:
Yeterday my HDD was working fine. I was moving files and folders around in it, copying things from my PC to it and so forth. I put my computer to sleep and then unplugged my HDD to take it to my office. When I plugged in at my office computer the HDD wasn't labeled and it only showed a single 2GB file called "USBC8T+à.". I tried scanning my drive with an antivirus and it said the drive wasn't accessible. So I brought it back home, thinking it was a problem with my office PC. But the damage was already done, my home computer also only showed the 2GB file.
I clicked on Properties->Tools->Check Now... only clicked on the "Automatically fix file system errors" checkbox and when it was finished it said that nothing was wrong. After that I ran it again but now I clicked both checkboxes, searching and fixing for bad sectors. While that was running my computer decided it was a good idea to have one of it's most annoying and sporadic errors happen...it shut down out of nothing, interrupting the scan. When I restarted it and checked my drive it didn't show the 2GB file anymore. Add to that that when I tried running the error-checking tool again it just closed and didn't say anything. Also, if I just click on Properties, it shows that I have 220GB of used space and about 70GB of free space, So my files are still there. I clicked on Show Hidden Files and Folders and it only shows 5 files: Recycle Bin, Recycle Bin.BIN, System Volume Information, FOUND.000, and FOUND.001 (none of which I have ANY idea what they are and what the files they contain mean).
I then plugged my drive to my other home computer which is running on XP. Tried the error-checking tool again, checking both checkboxes and again it didn't show any problems. After that I ran EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional 4.3.6, and after 7 hours it showed that it found about 1061GB of data to recover. More than three times what my HDD's capacity is! Plus, I honestly didn't understand a thing of what it had found because the folders and files were not called the same and they were simply TOO many. And since it'a a TB of data to recover, I obviously have no space ANYWHERE on any computer to recover that data to. So now I'm running PC Inspector File Recovery 4.0 to see if it has a more understandable solution. Thing is, it'll take 4000+ minutes to finish scanning my drive.
Is there any other explanation or solution for this!? Has this happened to anyone else? Or should I just resign and format my drive and just lose all my files?
Yeterday my HDD was working fine. I was moving files and folders around in it, copying things from my PC to it and so forth. I put my computer to sleep and then unplugged my HDD to take it to my office. When I plugged in at my office computer the HDD wasn't labeled and it only showed a single 2GB file called "USBC8T+à.". I tried scanning my drive with an antivirus and it said the drive wasn't accessible. So I brought it back home, thinking it was a problem with my office PC. But the damage was already done, my home computer also only showed the 2GB file.
I clicked on Properties->Tools->Check Now... only clicked on the "Automatically fix file system errors" checkbox and when it was finished it said that nothing was wrong. After that I ran it again but now I clicked both checkboxes, searching and fixing for bad sectors. While that was running my computer decided it was a good idea to have one of it's most annoying and sporadic errors happen...it shut down out of nothing, interrupting the scan. When I restarted it and checked my drive it didn't show the 2GB file anymore. Add to that that when I tried running the error-checking tool again it just closed and didn't say anything. Also, if I just click on Properties, it shows that I have 220GB of used space and about 70GB of free space, So my files are still there. I clicked on Show Hidden Files and Folders and it only shows 5 files: Recycle Bin, Recycle Bin.BIN, System Volume Information, FOUND.000, and FOUND.001 (none of which I have ANY idea what they are and what the files they contain mean).
I then plugged my drive to my other home computer which is running on XP. Tried the error-checking tool again, checking both checkboxes and again it didn't show any problems. After that I ran EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional 4.3.6, and after 7 hours it showed that it found about 1061GB of data to recover. More than three times what my HDD's capacity is! Plus, I honestly didn't understand a thing of what it had found because the folders and files were not called the same and they were simply TOO many. And since it'a a TB of data to recover, I obviously have no space ANYWHERE on any computer to recover that data to. So now I'm running PC Inspector File Recovery 4.0 to see if it has a more understandable solution. Thing is, it'll take 4000+ minutes to finish scanning my drive.
Is there any other explanation or solution for this!? Has this happened to anyone else? Or should I just resign and format my drive and just lose all my files?