Data Is Missing

Boomwebsearch · December 28, 2017

I got a Buffalo Linkstation 220 2TB 2-bay NAS device around 4 days ago. I had another computer send a file over to the NAS (copy the file) and then I went somewhere else and let the device transfer the data files. When I came back the data was not copied and the NAS stated that the folder was empty and the source file on the PC was gone and missing. I am sure that I did not accidentally cut and paste instead. In the trash box folder on my NAS, it shows the video file there although it is corrupt and will not open. What am I going to do in order to restore the file which is extremely important?

WereCatf · December 28, 2017

Was it on an SSD or a regular spinning-rust drive on the computer? If it was on an SSD, the file is a goner, no way of recovering it. On a mechanical drive you could still try to recover it, but you need to shut down the computer immediately, so that the file-data doesn't get overwritten by other files. You could then follow instructions at e.g. https://www.howtogeek.com/169344/how-to-recover-a-deleted-file-the-ultimate-guide/ , starting from the section called "The Safest Way to Recover a Deleted File"

Boomwebsearch · December 28, 2017

13 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Was it on an SSD or a regular spinning-rust drive on the computer?

The drive in the laptop computer is a hard drive and the RAID 1 array of drives in my NAS are all hard drives.

seagate_surfer · December 28, 2017

May be worthwhile to see if it can be recovered via the NAS drives. You could try working with the UFS Explorer RAID Recovery software.

Boomwebsearch · December 29, 2017

1 hour ago, seagate_surfer said:

May be worthwhile to see if it can be recovered via the NAS drives. You could try working with the UFS Explorer RAID Recovery software.

I copied two items from that laptop to the NAS server and there is only a corrupt version of one of the files on the NAS. The hard drives which are installed in the NAS are from Seagate so is the hard drive installed on the laptop. Does Seagate offer data recovery tools and or tools which have the ability to repair corrupt files? I would like to note that the laptop hard drive has an issue which causes data to be missing and corrupt as I have experienced in other instances.

seagate_surfer · December 29, 2017

We do have a DIY recovery software you can find here, it can be successful with recovering data in some instances of corrupt volumes/partitions, the trial version is free so it may be worth a shot to scan it and see what it finds.

If you're regularly running into file corruption even after reformatting a drive, it may be time to look at the health of the drive as a possible source of the trouble. You can run our free diagnostic software SeaTools on the laptop drive if you'd like. Probably would be best to do the Long Generic test, takes longer but scans all sectors of the drive versus shorter scans which only choose some sectors at random.