Toshiba External 2 TB, exFAT formatted, USB 3.0 interface – WIN 7 computer
Been on a shelf for almost 2 years. When i reconnected it showed 168 GB free of 1.81 TB but when i looked at the root contents there were only about 25 GB of files. I know about hidden files and the recycle bin so that is not the issue. Ran chkdsk and it got the same erroneous results, although it did put a couple dozen files in FOUND folder all marked as zero bytes. Tried moving files to the drive > 168 GB to maybe force the space open but no luck. Deleted the Recycle bin from the drive in case that was corrupt, no luck. Next I moved everything off the drive. All that’s left is the rebuilt recycle bin (29 bytes), FOUND folder (0 bytes), and a System Volume Information with 88 bytes (all according to the properties info in Win Explorer). Properties for the drive still only shows 194 GB of free space out of 1.81 TB. Disk Management shows only 2 partitions, 1 unallocated w 101 MB of unallocated space and the 2nd with 1862.92 GB in a Healthy (Primary Partition). Not sure about the unallocated space but the drive was definitely formatted as exFAT when i purchased it 2nd hand in 2015.
I’d just go ahead and reformat it but i found some notes that say shortly before i put it on the shelf i used it to transfer well over a TB of data from one computer to another onto an external HDD in a dock. I have not been able to find that target drive and this one did not have that data showing when i opened it. On the off chance that somehow that data was not thoroughly deleted and still resides on this drive taking up the unreleased free space (I know that is very very unlikely, especially since i wrote nearly 200 GB onto the drive as above) I thought I’d take a shot and see if anyone here:
- Has any ideas about why all that free space is not showing up (except for all the standard things i’ve already tried)
- Anything I might try to see if any of those transferred files are still on this thing in a way i might be able to recover them?
TIA for any ideas or assistance?
ed
