Question Moving HDD from one PC to another, todays data is disappearing

[Creed Bratton]

Hi there,

We're having a very peculiar problem going on.
We collect data out in vehicles which gets saved to HDD's. We then pull these out when finished (from the drive bays) and slot them into the upload computer in the office. The problem is today and on Saturday, somehow all the data that was collected on that day just vanishes when we load up the upload computer and check the drives. Checks we're done before removing them from the vehicle so all the data was accounted for.
Basically what happens:
-ONLY files that were made on the day disappear from the Hard drives. Data that was already on them remain unaffected.
-If the HDD's are put back in the vehicle computer, some files may re-appear and some don't, doing it again might cause different files to show up.
-On the office computer there is no record of the data's existence (checking for hidden or deleted data) the first time the HDD's are put in.
-After the HDD's were put back in vehicle computer and some data found then put back in office computer some of the data might show up. Or at least the empty folders.
-The HDD's used today are different from the ones used on Saturday (we have lots) but the computers are the same.

We don't know what on earth is causing this, it's never happened before, and thought Saturday's instance was a one-off but since today it happened again something fishy is going on. Boss is currently running a check disk on one of the HDD's but of course that may help with the data it won't fix what's causing it.

Anyone have any ideas on potentials that are causing this corruption/data loss? If you need more info or clarification please ask or let me know if I've posted this in wrong place or this isn't the website for this kind of thing (first post here), I'm good with computers but this goes above my head.

 

[rgd1101]

data cache on the vehicles ?

 

[Creed Bratton]

Boss man doesn't think so but I should also say our data we collect could be total of a few GB to hundreds of GB's.

 

[Grobe]

You need to contact the manufacturer of whatever device used in the vehicles.

Running checkdisk may cause the problem to be worse because the device may handle the file system in a way that doesn't quite corresponds to the file system standard.

Is this "device" a Windows based product? The problem can be everything from data corruption on the device (faulty ram?) to bad sectors on the hdd and a device that doesn't know how to handle.

 

[Creed Bratton]

They're just regular computers running Windows 10. The data after it's collected is run through a file check process to make sure it's all there and without error. So there is nothing wrong with the data before the computer is shut down to remove the drives.
It's incredibly unlikely that it's the HDD's themselves as it has happened on different ones, both old and new using NTFS format.
Could faulty RAM cause data loss on these HDD's? Especially which is specific to only the same day data being lost? Thanks for your help.

 

[USAFRet]

They're just regular computers running Windows 10. The data after it's collected is run through a file check process to make sure it's all there and without error. So there is nothing wrong with the data before the computer is shut down to remove the drives.
It's incredibly unlikely that it's the HDD's themselves as it has happened on different ones, both old and new using NTFS format.
Could faulty RAM cause data loss on these HDD's? Especially which is specific to only the same day data being lost? Thanks for your help.

What application is collecting the data?
I'm suspecting the application is the issue.

 

[Creed Bratton]

What application is collecting the data?
I'm suspecting the application is the issue.

It's our own software so you won't be able to provide any information around that. The software gets closed and the files are still there before the computer gets shut down. How could software cause this when the files are already there on the HDD prior to shutting down?

 

[fzabkar]

Are we to understand that this problem affected several vehicle computers and several HDDs on the same day?

Are all vehicle computers identical? Are all HDDs of the same capacity? SATA? SAS?

Could a recent Windows update be responsible ??? Are the motherboards Intel or AMD based? Many people have been reporting weird data loss problems with AMD Ryzen platforms.

Can you find your missing files with a data recovery tool? I recommend the free version of DMDE. It allows you to recover up to 4000 files from any one folder.

 

[Creed Bratton]

It happened on Saturday 9/1 and today 14/1. I was just told it was with 2 different vehicles but were 4 different HDD's (2 get used at a time). 2 were new and 2 were older. Either 1 or 2 TB and I believe they're all SATA. I asked the boss to try file recovery but they just re-surveyed instead which was very helpful for this so I honestly don't know if it would work or not.
I was more just having some hope that someone has seen something similar to this and had the answer (major long shot). I'm pretty sure the computers are the same but not 100% sure. Both are Intel i7's with at least 16GB RAM.

I feel we're just gonna get an IT guy in to have a good look what is going on. Although we backup almost everything our data is too important to risk losing it. We will get one of our development guys to also check the software if it's doing something it shouldn't.
Thanks.

 

[rgd1101]

test with a ssd? what the vehicles ? os?