[spookymulder825]

Hello all... I am very worried and need your help desperately.

I have a 300 GB Seagate external hard drive, formatted in FAT32, which has served as a sort of backup/miscellaneous junk storage area for the whole family's computers...

I recently noticed that some files, which used to be many megabytes or even a gigabyte or two in size, have inexplicably gone down to just several kilobytes, or none at all.

In addition, some completed Azureus downloads that I had been seeding for a long time (so long, in fact, that I'd stopped them because their share ratios had gone over 1.0) turned out to be only partially complete when I performed "Force Re-Check" on them. (I know they were 100% complete; trust me.)

I don't think it's just a problem with Azureus downloads, because I've done "Get Info" on some folders that have just been sitting there, untouched by any program, and they seem to have gotten much smaller.

And when I "Get Info" for the drive, there seems to be a whole lot more free space than there ever was before.

I used Disk Utility to "Verify" and then "Repair" the drive; it gave me a long, rapidly scrolling list of files and words that apparently meant there was something not quite right... I remember seeing something about "Truncate? Yes" after every one... but in the end it said the drive was not modified. (I would share the output with you if I had it. Just a few minutes ago I tried to re-create it, but that was not possible! And I'll address that in just a bit)

After that, I booted into Windows XP (I'm on a black MacBook dual-booting 10.4.10 and Windows, and the drive is connected using FireWire) and tried using Windows's disk-checking utility to check and fix the drive... you know, the one where you have to reboot and watch the white, pixilated text scroll over that blue Windows XP background image....... it found "Unrecoverable errors" in two places, and attempted to convert the files into folders, but I shut down the computer in the middle of the process (bad idea, I know, but I was getting impatient, it was taking a long time, and I didn't think it was helping).

I then grabbed a Windows laptop that had Acronis Disk Director Suite installed, and disconnected the drive from my Mac and connected the drive to the PC using USB 2.0 (don't worry, I shut the drive down beforehand and I never use USB and FireWire at the same time)...... it turned out that Acronis just uses Windows' built-in disk-checking utility (chkdisk? chkdsk?), the same one I'd just cancelled. But this time I let it finish, and.... again, I don't have the output to share with you. But it looked all right; it finished converting the "unrecoverable error" folders into files, and didn't report any errors or anything of that sort.

But all the problems I've mentioned had not gone away...

...plus, when I got back on my Mac and tried to use Disk Utility's "Repair" again, I got no huge rapidly scrolling list of files; all I got was

Verify and Repair disk “NO NAME”
** /dev/disk1s1
** Phase 1 - Read FAT
** Phase 2 - Check Cluster Chains
** Phase 3 - Checking Directories
** Phase 4 - Checking for Lost Files
Next free cluster in FSInfo block (12) not free
fix? yes
43674 files, 3888224 free (4053667 clusters)

1 non HFS volume checked
No repairs were necessary






I'm sorry for the long post, and the complicated problem, and the lack of more detailed information, but I really hope someone here can help me... if not, at least I might be able to finally get to sleep just knowing that the problem has been posted here.... if anyone could help me somehow, maybe recommend some sort of data-recovery software, or something, I would be grateful beyond....... beyond......... I don't know. Just very, very grateful. Anyone? Please?

[reader50]

FAT32 is not the most advanced filesystem around. Also, since the external is a non-boot drive, it doesn't get autochecked on bootup.

It got damaged at some point, most likely in the volume bitmat (or FAT's equivalent anyway). Files (or a single large file) got stored on top of parts of many existing files. Then maybe later deleted. My guess is after all this load/save activity, the damage happened too long ago to be recoverable, even with a really good recovery utility.

Note: since you let a couple mediocre utilities do repairs already, your chances of a good utility being able to recover anything has dropped to zip for that reason too.

In the future, I'd suggest doing a manual drive check on it once a week. If you're comfortable scripting, set up a check once a day. The earlier you catch damage in the future, the less data it will get away with.

[ Insert the standard advice on keeping backups for everything. ]

You can pick up a really good Windoze / FAT32 recovery utility if you like. It's not a bad idea at all to have such tools on hand. But don't expect it to recover anything on the drive this time.

ps - your downloads may go slower for the next few months. After seeding corrupted pieces for who-knows how long, you may have been flagged as a file-poisoner client working for the **AA.

[spookymulder825]

Thank you, reader50. Even though you haven't given me much hope for the situation, you have made me feel better just by providing your input...

...what about commercial data recovery services? Does anyone know if they might be able to help? Any recommendations?

[reader50]

Data recovery services are for getting stuff off a drive that has failed physically. ie - strange native music sounds from the drive, smoke now and then, drive fails to mount and can't be seen by utilities. Also, data recovery services are outlandishly expensive. Thousands of dollers, from what I've heard.

Your drive seems to be physically fine, so recovery utilities are able to reach every block to try and scavenge something. You can already do everything a recovery service does, for a lot less. They do things like open the drive in a cleanroom, then replace the heads or drive motor. Whatever it takes to make the drive read again, then they use recovery software on it.

Your missing data was most likely overwritten at some point, if so it's gone. If it were still there (if you caught the drive just after the corruption happened), then letting Windows' so-so repair utility work on it probably obscured all the little clues that better utilities use to try and put files back together.

If you really want that data, pick up the best Windows recovery utility and let it try. I don't know what utility to recommend, and I don't expect it to recovery anything more at this point. But maybe it would get a few files back. There's no way to tell for sure without trying it.

If you have (or suspect) corruption in the future, I'd suggest using the usual check utility to see if damage is present. If there is damage, stop using the drive immediately. Don't let the regular OS utility try to repair, set the drive aside until you can turn the best utility loose on it. The chances of recovery go up dramatically if the best utility gets first crack at the repair, without some other utility working on the drive first.

On my Mac, I use Disk Utility to do scans, because it's the fastest way to check a disk. If corruption is found, I let DiskWarrior handle the repair. This works out well, but DiskWarrior only works on HFS/HFS+ disks. I've no idea what the best Windows utility is today. Perhaps someone else with Windows experience will chime in.

ps - stay away from Norton. On the Mac, recent versions of Norton do more damage to the disks than they repair. From what I've heard now and then, current Windows versions aren't so good either. There has to be someone else making recovery software for Windows.