Question HDD reverted back to 2019, any way to reverse it?

[dzerg]

I recently upgraded to a from an EVGAZ390 and i5-9600k to an MSI Z490 and i9 10850K. I have 3 storage units, a 1TB Seagate ST1000DM003, a 1TB Crucial MX500, and another small ssd. I did the following:

1. Installed new CPU and motherboard in case
2. Attached Crucial SSD (same SSD I booted from with my old motherboard)
3. Attached HDD and small SSD
4. Booted computer – had to changed to UEFI mode to get it to recognize my Crucial SSD
5. I booted everything up and it worked fine, but my 1TB Seagate seemed to have recovered itself to 2019 without me doing anything. The size is about 200gb less and a ton of files that I had years ago suddenly appeared, while none of my new data is on there. It's really important data that I need and I have no idea why it reverted back 2+ years or how to undo it.

I tried using Recuva but it only shows files from 2019, nothing since then.

Is this normal? Any suggestions on how to reverse a recovery? I didn't initiate anything on this drive so I'm super confused about how this happened.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[USAFRet]

It's really important data that I need

Why oh why was there not a real backup of this data.

But, moving on...
It can't just suddenly revert to how it was 2 years ago. That is not a thing.

The data saved in the 2019-2021 timeframe was saved elsewhere.


Please don't use any 'recovery' thing, until the actual problem is found.

To start, please show us a screencap of the Disk Management window.

 

[dzerg]

Because I'm an idiot I'll use a cloud backup from now on.

Here's my Disk Management, it's drive D:

https://imgur.com/a/zyZxzee

View: https://imgur.com/a/zyZxzee

 

[USAFRet]

What other drives are or were in this system?

 

[dzerg]

I had another small 120gb SSD. I don't really use it for much so I disconnected it. I checked on that drive as well, but it wouldn't be big enough to hold the missing data anyways.

 

[USAFRet]

So...new system.

By any chance did you do a full OS reinstall on the C drive in this upgrade process?

If not, have you done a search on the C drive for any of these lost files?

 

[dzerg]

I did not, I just plugged in the drives and it booted up. I've searched both drives extensively. It was around 400gb of music production files and nothing related to them has been found.

I know you said it's not possible for it to revert, but there's tons of downloads and games that I uninstalled since 2019 that are all back on there, which doesn't make sense to me.

 

[CountMike]

I did not, I just plugged in the drives and it booted up. I've searched both drives extensively. It was around 400gb of music production files and nothing related to them has been found.

I know you said it's not possible for it to revert, but there's tons of downloads and games that I uninstalled since 2019 that are all back on there, which doesn't make sense to me.

It doesn't make sense to anybody. You may gave a problem with permissions in windows. I would boot with a live Linux distro from a USB drive to bypass them.

 

[USAFRet]

Install and run either WinDirStat, or WizTree.

Run as Administrator, selecting only the drive in question. Do this for both C and D individually.
Post a screencap here.

 

[dzerg]

Let me know if this is what you needed, photos of both drives are at this link:

https://imgur.com/a/5GIXeK5

View: https://imgur.com/a/5GIXeK5

 

[USAFRet]

I asked you to run those so that you might get a better picture of what is in there.

I cannot visualize how it came to be like this.
The only other case like this I've ever seen was due to a clone, then forgotten drive, then a bad SATA cable.

Are we 100% sure there is/was no other drives except these two 1TB drives, and the 120GB SSD?

 

[dzerg]

Yes, 100% sure there is no other drive. Would trying to hook it back up to the old motherboard potentially solve anything, or is that a waste of time? Someone else also recommended converting it from MBR to GPT, should I try that?

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, 100% sure there is no other drive. Would trying to hook it back up to the old motherboard potentially solve anything, or is that a waste of time? Someone else also recommended converting it from MBR to GPT, should I try that?

Do NOT do this conversion.
That is easily data destructive.
Perform NO clicky software "fix" until the actual problem is discovered, and a specific solution presents itself.

You'd have to hook up both drives back to the old system.
And even though this "worked" in one direction, it may not work in the other direction.

Booting up a drive+OS in a different system often/usually fails.

 

[dzerg]

I set my old motherboard back up and connected the two hard drives. All of the files showed back up as normal. The hard drive in question went from the ~500GB it was at back to the ~900GB that I was looking for. I transferred it all to a new SSD and will back it up in cloud storage from now on. My guess is there has to be some kind of formatting/coding difference between the motherboards and it wasn't reading the HDD correctly. Thanks for all the help!

 

[USAFRet]

My guess is there has to be some kind of formatting/coding difference between the motherboards and it wasn't reading the HDD correctly. Thanks for all the help!

Ok...that is very very weird.

But good that you've recovered all your data.

Please take this as a wake up to have your important stuff backed up at all times. Weird things can happen.