The content of harddrive is not accessible anymore

jan 0 Reputation points
2023-02-06T18:32:57.6633333+00:00

I regularly store my private data on external harddrives. A couple of days ago, when i wanted to organize the files on some of the drives.

I connected the first drive with a collection of imagefiles to the computer and disconnected it after i was done. Directly afterwards i connected another harddrive, because i needed to prepare some changes on that drive as well.

But when i opened the explorer window, the harddrive was presented to me as if it had the same content like the prior edited drive. Also the volume-title was the altered to match the name of the previously edited drive. All the directory-structures and the documents that used to be on the drive where not shown anymore. It looked as if the first drive was still connected, while the files and directory-structure now presented to me where not accessible at all.

It must sound confusing, i know. Let me try to explain another way.

I had files one, two and three on the first drive and files four , five and six on the second. Now, thew second drives shows up to the OS as if containing files one, two and three and the files four, five and six are not visible anymore.

It looks like some "filetable" the windows os maintains got overwritten withe the content of the prior "filetable".

I tried to analyze the drive with some third party tools and, one of them really was able to somehow access the information of the drive. It presented the folder- and filestructure i was expecting.

So the information must still be on the drive. Question is though, how can i restore the previous state of the drive, and that's where i'm stuck right now....

Any help is very much appreciated....

Windows 10
Windows 10
A Microsoft operating system that runs on personal computers and tablets.
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  1. Limitless Technology 44,526 Reputation points
    2023-02-07T16:32:31.8466667+00:00
    Hi. Thank you for your question and reaching out. I’d be more than happy to help you with your query
    
    You can try the following steps to restore the previous state of the drive:
    
        Check if the files are in the Recycle Bin. If so, restore them.
    
        Use data recovery software, such as Recuva, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, or MiniTool Power Data Recovery, to scan the drive and recover the missing files.
    
        If the above steps don't work, you may need to try a low-level data recovery tool, such as TestDisk or DiskInternals Uneraser, to recover the data. These tools work by reading the hard drive sector by sector and trying to reconstruct the file system.
    
        If the above steps still don't work, you may need to seek the help of a professional data recovery service, as the problem could be a hardware issue or the data may be lost permanently.
    
    It's important to note that attempting to recover the data yourself could cause further damage to the drive and make it more difficult to recover the data, so consider the risks before proceeding.
    
    
    If the reply was helpful, please don’t forget to upvote or accept as answer, thank you.
    
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