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I have 3 partitions: one for win7 (ntfs), one for Ubuntu (ext4) and one just for data (ntfs so both operating systems can see them). My problem is that I had stored some files on the data partition using ubuntu and when i booted win7 all that data was gone! After that I couldn't find the files even when using Ubuntu. My files were simply GONE :( Is there something I can do in Ubuntu or is it just windows problem?

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I hate to say this, but it sounds more like a user problem. Did you ever actually see the files after you saved them to confirm that they were where you expected them to be? If you really saved them there, they don't usually disappear. Perhaps try searching the ext4 partition in Ubuntu and see if they were saved in a different location. – Marty Fried Feb 20 '12 at 20:33
hah I thought that as well. Nope, the files are missing. Actually this is the second time I encounter the same exact situation. – yehuda Feb 20 '12 at 21:26
How did you store the files? Did you confirm that they were there using a different method, such as nautilus, in case there was a write error that you didn't see. It's sometimes not straightforward getting the NTFS permissions correct, so maybe the write attempt failed. – Marty Fried Feb 20 '12 at 22:05
The files were there for about a week. I accessed them many times using ubuntu. It was a few pdf and video files I downloaded from the net.Does it have to do anything with the filenames? Linux allows more characters. Could win7 erase the files from the filetable just because of a wrong filename? – yehuda Feb 20 '12 at 22:23
NTFS maximum = 255 chars, ext3/ext4 maximum = 256. I can't imagine what might be happening. I know I have several NTFS partitions, and never had any problems like that. There must be some bit of information that is missing, or different. Were they formatted in Windows? I don't use Windows 7, but does it still have that setting for dynamic drives? If so, maybe that has some affect. – Marty Fried Feb 21 '12 at 5:09

2 Answers

up vote 7 down vote
+25

If you hibernate windows (or purpose or because of power-saving), then use ubuntu to store files on the NTFS partition, and then boot up windows, Windows thinks the disk was corrupted while it was in hibernate and "fixes" anything different. After that loging back into ubuntu just confirms that the files have in-fact been deleted.

Also I have seen that windows 7 may do a chkdsk after it installs updates on shudown when you bring it back up windows does extra tasks related to installing updates, so be careful not to boot into ubuntu after shutting down from updates. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/windows-chkdsk-deletes-files-written-by-ubuntu-on-an-ntfs-partition-913606/

Yes even on a shared partition seprate from the windows partition and take care even with fat partitions (usb drives).

Sources, http://superuser.com/questions/211079/what-do-i-have-to-take-care-of-when-hibernating-both-ubuntu-and-windows-dual-bo/211175#211175 , http://superuser.com/questions/39532/hibernating-and-booting-into-another-os-will-my-filesystems-be-corrupted

Edit: I was looking through the widows site to try and find if they detailed the hibernate process, but this sounds interesting http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd143253(v=winembedded.5).aspx , It seems at best the write caching from the harddrive is being saved to memory, then being written after bringing the drive back up, this may mean that the files can't be recovered, because it's not "deleting" as in removing the first letter of the file so the system does not see it, but actually overwriting large areas of data that have been cached. Needs to be looked into more.

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up vote 3 down vote

It happened to me as well. After reading a lot about this on internet I came to know that this happens when Windows is in Hibernate mode. There are already some related questions here on askubuntu and also on superuser.

Files disappear on NTFS partition

http://superuser.com/questions/144720/missing-files-when-windows-7-returns-from-hibernate-w-dual-boot

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