HHD wiped itself with FAT32 and weird files remain

izit · 17 Jul 2016 at 19:06

Hi excuse the desperation post but I just plugged in my 500gb hard drive which used to be full with backed up files, it seems that all the files have now been replaced with windows files such as "S247, "S262" and inside those folders some sort of META and XMA files of 1kb each.
The hard drive is showing as FAT32 now for some reason.

I'd be so grateful if anyone can advise, data recovery software came up with absolutely nothing.

Toytown · 17 Jul 2016 at 22:45

Those files are what a PVR creates, such as older SkyTV Boxes (not sure about new ones). The stream.str is the tv/movie show thats recorded and the other files are the meta data for them.

You sure nobody has plugged the drive into one and been using it ?

marc2003 · 18 Jul 2016 at 02:11

Toytown said:
You sure nobody has plugged the drive into one and been using it ?

Yep. If the drive was NTFS previously, the only way it can end up as FAT32 is by human intervention.

bledd · 18 Jul 2016 at 13:25

The used space doesn't tally with that filesize mind..

Something odd going on.

izit · 18 Jul 2016 at 20:34

BoatyMcBoatface said:
The used space doesn't tally with that filesize mind..

Something odd going on.

You're right, some files read a few GB.

I'm fairly sure this has never been attached to anything other than my PC as backup storage, it's been a few years so I can't say for absolute certain but I can't image I could forget it.

Cheers guys, please let me know if you think of anything.

Rannoch · 18 Jul 2016 at 22:00

Very odd 'fsn_data' is related to Sky tv.

izit · 18 Jul 2016 at 22:50

Vargas said:
Very odd 'fsn_data' is related to Sky tv.

If that is the case I will take your word for it and conclude that I lost no data and somehow acquired this from elsewhere!
Thank you all

bledd · 19 Jul 2016 at 09:57

Use a sharpie to label your loose hard drives