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I have a Ubuntu 20.04/Windows 10 setup. Both OS'es boot from - and store application settings etc in - their own partition on my SSD, while most of my personal data is stored on a separate HDD (physically inside the laptop casing, but for all intents and purposes an external hard drive).

I almost never use Windows. Today, I opened it to test something for what (I think) was the first time since I bought the computer 6 months ago. In Windows, I found I could not access any files on the shared HDD - it was listed as empty, and the 'Properties' tab confirmed that all its space was free. I did not do anything else to the directory in Windows.

Concerned, I booted back into Ubuntu, and found that there too the HDD was blank (it contained only an empty recycle bin and a 'System Volume Information' directory). I unmounted and remounted, ran ntfsffix, tried mounting other partitions... but everything came up empty. Curiously, gparted did list that the HDD had about 170 GB in use (which sounds about right for what I know should be on there). But this still gave me no way to actually access the files.

I am now restoring from an external backup with Duplicati, so all my files should be alright, but I am very concerned. How could this possibly have happened? How can I keep it from happening again if I ever need to use Windows again?

Drubbels
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  • Windows turns fast startup back on with updates, which after 6 months it surely ran. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1288661/windows-10-doesnt-start-after-setting-up-dual-boot-with-ubuntu-20-04/1288764#1288764 Windows may also have done UEFI udpate and reset some settings, so check those also. – oldfred Nov 18 '20 at 17:46
  • Thanks - based on that, do you think it is still possible to restore the original drive to functionality? I'm asking because downloading my backup seems to be going a lot slower than I expected. – Drubbels Nov 18 '20 at 18:38
  • Since you say ntfsfix, format was NTFS? If so then Windows tools typically work better for recovery. May get full filename. You can try photorec. I have used it and it takes forever, only recovers files by extension, not full file name, and need another drive to recovery data into. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step & https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery & http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2236951&p=13086950#post13086950 – oldfred Nov 18 '20 at 19:55
  • Yes, it was NTFS. What do you mean by 'only recovers files by extension'? – Drubbels Nov 18 '20 at 20:12
  • It finds files like xx1.txt, xx2.txt etc. So you lose file name, but know type. Some files like photos have name embedded in them and then you can use that to rename them. I now always include a file name in every text file I create. I only lost a few dozen text files, had older backup, but it recovered all the versions as a new save writes to a new location. So I had many copies of the same file but could not totally tell which had additions or deletions. Lots of effort to find which was which, then even more effort to run compares. Or now I have backup religion. – oldfred Nov 18 '20 at 22:18

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