Did my external hard drive get wiped?

[guitthefunk]

hey everybody! yesterday, a friend of mine mounted my external drive (formatted for PC) to his MAC - he was going to upload some files to it. he wasn't able to put anything on to the drive, but was seemingly able to pull files from the drive. his computer was saying that the drive was read only. once i got the drive home and hooked it back up to my computer, all the files have disappeared. i'm showing the main file folders, but no sub-folders or files below that level. the weird thing is, when i checked the properties of the drive, the same amount of space is used/available as previously, so it doesn't seem like the files are gone. i can't seem to defragment or anything - i keep getting the message "Recycle bin on E:\ is corrupt - do you want to empty it." ??? what can i do to bring my files back?

[guitthefunk]

i'm sweatin' to think i may have lost all my music stuff on the external... help please!

[Bazzle]

I feel for you, so I thought I'd give you a friendly bump.I hope your problem is solved, but if it isn't, maybe someone can help.I just transfered a bunch of files from a Mac only studio, directly on to my external drive and had no probs at all.

[Sam DeFranco]

Did you check to see if the lost files are actually hidden?

I had a similar incident occur when I hot-swapped a Maxtor Ext FW drive (big mistake!) on my PC. The file folders were there but the PT and sound files were renamed FOUND.000, FOUND.001, etc. and were hidden! I could only view the files by setting the file folder to show hidden file types.

The WAV files were renamed, but worked. Because there were so many files (literally hundereds), I wasn't able to easily rename the files. Fortunately I had backed up my sessions a few days earlier and so I didn't lose too much work.

You might try a file recovery software. There are several available free for download and are listed elsewhere on the DUC. Just do a DUC or internet search or maybe others will chime in here as I don't have the links.

I feel your pain!

[guitthefunk]

thanks sam - i'm going to try allowing hidden files to be shown tonight. another friend also recommended file recovery software, so i'll go that route if i have to. i wonder why bazzle was able to cross platforms with no problem and i wasn't...

[lemix]

Hello there guitthefunk ,

I'm doing x-platform on a regular basis. My ext FW#1 has a FAT32 partition and it works on MACs, before OSX.
FW #2 is HFS+ formatted on Panther, which is great on OSX. On my PT PC I have MacDrive5 installed, so it can read and write to it.
Sorry to hear your misadventures. I'd try;
>ask friend w/Mac to copy those files again and burn you a data CDR/DVDR. First check if they are retriveable, than reformat that drive in question.
>try taking the drive out of the enclosure, and hook it up internal IDE...see what happens...

good luck,
cheers,

[guitthefunk]

there's a happy ending after all! i spoke to technical support at acomdata (the external manufacturer) and they recommended that i run error checking on the drive. i had left it off and disconnected for the past few days. when i plugged it in, magically, all the files were back in place. computers are so strange some times... i had rebooted, turned the drive off/on etc. last week to no avail! i'm just pumped that i didn't lose all those files.

[lemix]

Way to go !!
Now please enjoy a cool beverage

cheers,

[spkguitar]

And back that mofo up!

[Roy Howell]

Alright...great news. Glad to hear it.