Backed up data ALL gone!

Portable Drives My Passport
1

Hi everyone.

Mac OSX Ver 10.7.5, NTFS Driver installed, 3TB WD External HD.

Over the past few days I’ve been backing up the info from an old WD external HD to a new 3TB one.Today I woke to find that all the info that I thought I backed up to the new HD is no longer there. Some of the folders that I created are still there but they are empty,they don’t contain any of the info that I backed up & some of the folders are gone all together. The things is,when I check the HD’s capacity it isn’t 3TB,it’s showing less so the data must still be there but it’s just not showing…How can this be? I just don’t know what to do,my blood pressure is at boiling point.

To make matters worse,my mac is running at a snails pace when the new external HD is plugged in.I cannot do a thing other than curse that spinning beach ball. I have 3 other WD external HD’s & I don’t have any issues backing up or reading data to them.

I wonder if the fact that I backed up data from one external HD directly to another has caused these problems? Usually I would copy data from one external HD to my Macs HD then cut it to from my Mac’s HD & paste it to the other external HD. I just can’t believe all the backed up data is gone,it took hours to back up.Is there anyone that can please help me with this?

2

It is possible that some of your files are corrupted, you can try running a test using Disk Utility to rule out any possible hardware damage. Check the link below for the steps. 

How to test a drive for defects or problems on a Mac 

1 Like
3

Thank you for responding so quickly. I followed your instructions,Disk Utility was unable to repair the disk but I was able to retrieve the vast majority of the info I had backed up. Thank you so much for your help.