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My laptop's internal HDD was destroyed along with all its files, MY memories/work. I bought a new one. It appears not to have any issues, but I can't trust this. This has been very hard for me, but thank you everyone for your help, sincerely.


When I originally posted this, I had not seen any evidence of files being lost on my internal hdd, not since installing ubuntu 13.01. Unfortunately, I was wrong. I keep losing files. Years of my life, pictures of loved ones, art and music by myself and my friends. I'm losing it. It appears to be going after older files first, especially anything with "back up" in the title, nested folders, and almost exclusively destroys personal content. I believe the problem was lying dormant for the last couple months. suddenly it's popped up, and just when I was starting to believe that AT LEAST Ubuntu Linux had helped me saved most of my stuff. I received a new external hdd today. I'll try to save what i can.

original post: My computer is an ASUS G7VW. While running Windows 7, my files started disappearing and being moved and even copied, without my consent. I did a full install of ubuntu 13.01 (it gave me the option to preserve my personal files, but otherwise fully format the drive. everything seemed fine and I was able to recover most of my files since Ubuntu read my HDD correctly and most of the problem had been in the directory. However, the problem continues to ravage my two external HDDs. I haven't found any evidence that it's messing up the contents of my /home folder, but files and folders on both my external HDDs continue to be "mislocated."

One of my external drives (toshiba desktop external drive) is fairly new; the other (seagate freeagent goflex) is a bit older. I'm certain that the age of the drive is not a factor in this context. Both external drives and the laptop hdd are 1TB drives. Neither of the external drives have been damaged physically, or even so much as left in a hot/freezing car. I did only find out a couple months ago that usb is not "hot-swappable" but now I always unmount then disconnect the drive. The problem has persisted since i've wised up.

The drive healthSMART util included in Ubuntu says all drives are healthy. Still, it takes an extremely long time to copy or burn data, from the Ubuntu drive or the USB drives (if that helps). I've recently been trying `rkhunter, clamtk, and comodo to eliminate the possibility of a virus, so far it's turned up nothing significant. At least I'm learning a lot about Ubuntu Linux... but I hope someone can shed some light on what's messing with my personal files.

Update: I found out why Clamtk wouldn't scan the external drives; it has to run from the terminal via gksu clamtk to select that option. Frustratingly, it's reported well over 300 possible "threats" on either hdd, the vast majority of which are not viruses or malware, and since you have to go through them one by one. it's been very time consuming, but I'm hoping it will be worth the effort.

Update & more info: Both of the external drives use the NTFS file system, and the internal drive was formatted with the default filesystem used by ubuntu 13.01 (ext3?). the external toshiba drive is now reporting "Contents: 207,907 items, totalling 955.0 GB (some contents unreadable)" ... I don't know why any of it would be unreadable, and that sound about 200GB more than I thought it was holding, but that's just a guestimate.

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    What do you mean when you say "mislocated"?
    – jobin
    Apr 14, 2014 at 16:20
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    Though the possibility of a virus is remote, it can't be ruled out. Is it possible for you to scan the drive/partition using an antivirus software? You can have a look at some here.
    – jobin
    Apr 14, 2014 at 16:31
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    Are you certain the disk itself is not going bad? It sounds to me like the disk is in fact simply going bad. Corrupted or disappearing files is one thing that may happen when the disk itself goes bad. It could also be the controller for the disk, while the disk itself is ok.
    – dobey
    Apr 14, 2014 at 17:10
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    If it's an external USB drive, buy a new external USB disk enclosure, and move the disk from the old one to the new one. If it's the controller anyway. If it's the disk, you'll need a new disk.
    – dobey
    Apr 15, 2014 at 21:36
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    if it is happening to both drives, then no, the problem is most likely not with the dives themselves. a virus could be to blame but if you switched to ubuntu then the virus would no longer be able to operate and the problem would go away. another possibility is that a virus (or another abnormal action) damaged both drives in an identical fashion. Barring those possibilities, the only thing i can think of is a faulty motherboard, or corrupt (or poorly made) bios... those issues would be fixed with a new motherboard or flashing the bios... Apr 15, 2014 at 22:15

2 Answers 2

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You might want to check the disk's health. The two tools I would use are smartctl (if your H.D.D.s support S.M.A.R.T.) and e2fsck. Those should check for hard drive issues and attempt to repair the filesystem if they can.

The two things that make me suspect hard drive damage: 1) Disappearing files 2) Slow transfer speeds.

If that's not it, you might want to look at auditd which should tell you who/what is moving your files (assuming they are being moved). If you enable that and it shows you nothing, it's probably hard drive failure.

auditd tutorial

smartctl tutorial

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  • for a new user... details on how to use these tools (or at least links to the docs) would be invaluable... Apr 16, 2014 at 16:44
  • i will check out those apps. it can't hurt, but i feel that since it was happening to three drives before installing ubuntu, and two drives since, drive damage is unlikely the cause. but thank you! auditd might help, except that according to the files themselves, they have not been moved/accessed/altered since originally saved to the external drive.
    – b-girl
    Apr 17, 2014 at 1:25
  • You can't trust the access times, you can alter those yourself very very easily. Try 'touch -t 2010010100 fileName' and the timestamp on that file will be set to 01/01/2010 00:00. Anyways, I re-read over your post, can you give us an idea of your disk setup? Are all 3 disks separate, or are they in an LVM volume group? What filesystem is on them?
    – Seth
    Apr 17, 2014 at 13:33
  • @seth all 3 are separate. the internal is using the ubuntu linux default filesystem, and the external drives are using the default windows7 filesystem. also, i have run the drive health SMART util included in ubuntu, and all drives are healthy.
    – b-girl
    Apr 17, 2014 at 16:45
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    Ah, I did not realize you were using NTFS on the external drives; I thought you had reformatted all of them. New guess: Windows 7 corrupted the NTFS filesystem on those drives. That would explain why the two externals don't work, but the internal now does work (because the NTFS filesystem has been formatted). Look at chkdsk, which will require a Windows computer. After you repair them, I would suggest switching to ext3/4 on those if you can. Linux support for NTFS is not great.
    – Seth
    Apr 18, 2014 at 14:32
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so you probably get a virus on the computer,so install anti virus to Ubuntu(avg is good anti virus) and if you download avg write this command(the avg has not graffical user interface) sudo avgscan and where do you want to scan(for example the place where you mount the filesystem where has the ubuntu) sorry for my bad English

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