Windows 10 Files Disappeared after Transfer to Portable Drive

ShoobieStomper

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Dec 3, 2014
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Hey, guys! I recently transferred about 30 files (around 20 GB) to my portable drive and they disappeared. I'll try to explain what I did because I would like to know if I did something wrong so that I can avoid this in the future.

1. I unplugged my drive (Seagate Backup Plus 4TB formatted in NTFS) from my desktop (Windows 10) while it was off.

2. I then plugged the drive into my laptop (MacBook Pro) and mounted it using Microsoft NTFS for Mac by Paragon Software. I use NTFS so I can transfer larger files.

3. I transferred the files to the drive by moving them and I know the files transferred successfully so I unmounted the drive.

4. I plugged the drive back into my desktop while it was still off and then I turned it on.

I checked for the files once my desktop was on and they were completely gone and the space that they would've taken up had not been used. I think I goofed by not turning on my desktop first.

Anyway, can anyone explain what might've happened? Does Windows keep some sort of index of a drive and maybe it just didn't refresh or something?

All help is appreciated and thanks in advance!

- Alex
 
Solution
G
If you connect the external drive back to your laptop, do you see the files? If yes, then probably the MacBook file system is not compatible with the Windows file system.
Is this the first time you try to move files from your MacBook computer to a Windows computer? If no and if everything worked fine before, then probably your external drive got damaged.
Are you sure that the MacBook file system is compatibile with the Windows file system? If yes and if you'll find that the external drive got damaged, than next time do this process in three steps: first copy the files to the external drive, second verify that you can access the files on the other computer, third delete the files from the source computer.
In principle, you didn't do...
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If you connect the external drive back to your laptop, do you see the files? If yes, then probably the MacBook file system is not compatible with the Windows file system.
Is this the first time you try to move files from your MacBook computer to a Windows computer? If no and if everything worked fine before, then probably your external drive got damaged.
Are you sure that the MacBook file system is compatibile with the Windows file system? If yes and if you'll find that the external drive got damaged, than next time do this process in three steps: first copy the files to the external drive, second verify that you can access the files on the other computer, third delete the files from the source computer.
In principle, you didn't do anything wrong. There is no need to connect/disconnect the external drive with the computer shutdown.


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Solution
I do not see the files when I connect the drive to my laptop. It's like they just don't exist. I have transferred files like this many times and I have a little over 2 TB used on the drive.

However, I can't remember if I have ever plugged the drive into my desktop before turning it on after I've transferred new files to it and I thought that could've been why they disappeared. I guess it was just a bad transfer, but lesson learned. I will copy the files instead of moving them in the future.

Thanks for the reply!
 
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Then you should check the integrity of the drive. But before doing this or anything else on the drive, you should try to recover the files. They might still be on the drive and they might be recoverable. Try looking for a free recovery program if the files are important to you.

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