[SOLVED] My 1TB HDD somehow has 2TB of files on it...

[Gameslite]

Okay, let's start from the beginning.

I have a 1TB capacity 2,5'' WD My Passport, old one, from around 2013-ish. Somehow the file system had gone "poof" and the disk became unusable. Despite being nearly full before it broke, I wanted to recover all ~900GB of files before fixing it with a format.

Yet, somehow, when I scanned the disk with EaseUS, it says there's some 2168GB of RAW files on it. I can just barely find some place to store those 900GB. 2TB? No way. Now, I'm not knowledgeable enough to say what happened here, that's why I'm asking you guys.

Is there any way I'm being bamboozled by the software? Or that's just how it's supposed to be?

 

[USAFRet]

It does not have "2TB of files on it"

You're reading pointers to previously deleted files, that refer to more than the actual drive space.
"Hey...here's a file of 45MB!".
No.
"Here is a pointer to the location of where that 45MB drive used to be."

 

[Gameslite]

So, what can I do then? While I have the 900GB of free space for the files that should actually be there, the program says I don't have the required space (Those 2TB) for recovery.

It's not some super critical data or anything, but I had a lot of old family pictures on it, so it would be a shame to lose them.

 

[USAFRet]

So, what can I do then? While I have the 900GB of free space for the files that should actually be there, the program says I don't have the required space (Those 2TB) for recovery.

It's not some super critical data or anything, but I had a lot of old family pictures on it, so it would be a shame to lose them.

You need some other drive to recover to.
You can't search for and recover to that same physical drive.

 

[Gameslite]

You need some other drive to recover to.
You can't search for and recover to that same physical drive.

Who said anything about recovering to the same physical drive? The free 900GB I have in order to recover files from WD's "My Passport" to, is on another drive.

 

[USAFRet]

Who said anything about recovering to the same physical drive? The free 900GB I have in order to recover files from WD's "My Passport" to, is on another drive.

"I can just barely find some place to store those 900GB. 2TB? No way. "

That application is reading the file/folder structure. And reporting the theoretical size of what the files and folders used to be.
Hence, "2TB"

Obviously, there is not 2TB of actual recoverable data on that drive.

 

[Gameslite]

Well, if there's no 2TB of files and just about 900GB like it should be, then it should let me recover them, which it doesn't, just telling me I don't have enough of free space to do it. Which I with 100% certainty do have. Hence, I was asking, could it be that the software is just garbage?

I could in theory, choose which files to recover and which leave behind, but the problem with that is almost all of them are in ShockWave flash format with names like "FILE222" "FILE 344", so I can't choose the ones that I would want. I even have a single 1689GB .3DS file, don't know what that is.

 

[USAFRet]

And there is the pitfalls of "file recovery".
Randomly named files and file fragments. 001, 002, 054, etc, etc.
And not all of those are actual usable files, but rather file fragments.

Your application is reading the remnants of the the file allocation table.

 

[Gameslite]

And there is the pitfalls of "file recovery".
Randomly named files and file fragments. 001, 002, 054, etc, etc.
And not all of those are actual usable files, but rather file fragments.

Your application is reading the remnants of the the file allocation table.

Hmm, then everything is just scrambled around? Thought something like that may be the case. So it seems that this recovery it's beyond my meager skills.

I think I'll just ask some local company specializing in file recovery if anything can be done about it at all and if not I'll just cut my losses, since I know such recovery is often quite pricey.

Well, thank you for your help anyway. At least I learned something.

 

[USAFRet]

Another application to try, Autopsy.

opsy | Digital Forensics

Autopsy® is the premier end-to-end open source digital forensics platform. Built by Basis Technology with the core features you expect in commercial forensic tools, Autopsy is a fast, thorough, and efficient hard drive investigation solution that evolves with your needs.

www.autopsy.com