HDD Erased Itself

[TrueHazard]

Setup: Sever running Server 2012
Client running Windows 7 Ultimate, logged on as a regular user accessing a mapped network drive.

So I was copying a video over onto one of my network hard drives when, all of sudden, the transfer stopped. I canceled it, and tried to view the folders in the drive, but windows gave me an error saying that the drive wasn't ready. I chocked it up to something going on with the client workstation and promptly logged off and logged back on. No change, so I restarted and again, nothing.

I went to the server to check things out and the drive didn't even show up in Computer. I then restarted the server, found that the drive still wasn't listed, then checked Disk Management where I had to assign a new letter and noticed that everything on the drive was GONE!

Nothing has been able to explain this situation. I did not and have not manipulated anything within the server itself and the drive is still operational several days later.

Can anyone offer any theories as to what may have happened? I want to try and avoid this in the future.

Thanks in advance.

 

[drtweak]

Look in the event log of the server. See if anything is in there.

 

[TrueHazard]

Look in the event log of the server. See if anything is in there.

Thanks for the recommendation. While I was checking Event Viewer, I saw an NTFS error that stated there an unknown error with the drive and that it needed to be scanned online. While I was going back to "This PC" to verify the drive letter, I noticed that the free space indicator was indicating that the drive was full of files.

It would seem that during the scan process, the drive was inaccessible even after a restart. I have never seen this before, but I now have some lessons learned.