I was moving files from a laptop to an external hard drive connected via USB. It involved some “work” folder, which had inside it a submission 01 and _to be merged folders.
In Windows Explorer, I cut and pasted the “work” folder onto the external drive and then went to browse the files. When I entered the submission 01 folder, to my surprise, I was presented with another level of submission 01 and _to be merged folders. Entering the next “submission 01” folder I would be met with the same etc. The disk registers the work folder at about 400gb, some 23,767 files – orders of magnitude more than expected.
Each repeat of the _to be merged folder contains the expected files – so I’ve retrieved those. It’s just the submission 01 folder that has kept repeating, as if starting from the work folder.
The problem is, I can’t traverse down the submission 01 folders deep enough to see if I can retrieve the files (if they exist).
Does anyone know of a way that I might traverse to the bottom to see if I can retrieve the files? I have Windows and Linux (Mint) handy.
Mint’s terminal won’t open the work folder; complains of too many Symlinks. I tried Powershell and it eventually threw a “Cannot find path” error (this may have been caused by the same underlying issue and not Powershell itself – I’m not sure. ie. I may try this again when I get a more reliable PC in a few days).
I suspect the issue was caused by a dodgy USB connection; possibly due to aging laptop power supply.
