How can I verify data loss on an external hard drive?

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

I accidentally removed my external usb drive without ejecting.
The next time I connected the drive Windows 10 prompted a scan to fix errors.
They were fixed after the scan and the hard drive connects fine but this drive is loaded with pictures and music.

What exactly did Windows fix and is there a way to find out if a file was lost?

2

Hi,

You could refer to the following link: External Drive: Consequences of an Unsafe USB Drive Removal

3

As per the Microsoft Window’s latest update, it is ok to connect & disconnect USB or any other external drive while the PC is on & at working mode but to be on a safer side, it’s always recommended to go for a safe ejection of any external drive or USB drive from the system because not doing so may leads to some serious data loss situations.

In case, if you have lost some of your data due to the unsafe ejection of the drive then you need help of a reliable data recovery software. Here I recommend you to try Stellar Data Recovery , that will help you easily recover your lost or missing data from any storage drive.

4

@airtas, where are you with this issue? I’ve been a proponent of Safe Eject for exactly what happened to you.

  • When you do a Safe Eject, if an App is trying to use the drive, you will at least get a warning, unless you have identified the drive for Better Performance under Device Manager/properties/policies…
  • under Task Manager, you normally see many WD Apps running in the background and any one of these may have a lock on that drive. Where pull the USB… if you are using a file stored on that drive, and you pull it out, you could make that file corrupted. So, be sure that any other program is not externally using files on that drive, like a picture editor or movie viewer.
  • the Stellar Recovery that @mikes2 looks interesting. I don’t know if it tries to fix broken sectors and recovers data in this area…or does it jump around the bad area to get data on either side.
  • your immediate issue as to what may be lost is a little more involved. If you used the Backup process or if you manually copied files from PC to device…seems like the only thing to do is compare the folders. Open 2 Explorer windows (cntl-N) and view files, or look at properties at a high level of the tree. I’ve also used the Free version of Treesize that maps directories that tell you overall size and number of files of your folders. You can then expand the summary tree to view specific folders. The fact that totals may match, doesn’t mean that all the files are viewable till you actually open the bad file(s).
5

Maybe you can try a third party to scan your external hard drive. It will scan it deeply to find all the lost files. Then you can preview the files to determine what files to recover.