So I took my old hard drive (It was not the hard drive that my OS was on, just data drive) and using a USB to IDE chord I tried to move files over to my new computer. Both were running mint - old one XFCE, new one KDE. I recently noticed that only my folders had moved with nothing in them. When I went back there was nothing on old drive. When I check properties it says the right number/size of files are still there, but nothing shows up. I have tested the drive and it is fine. I ran Photorec/testdisk and managed to get most of my files back, but some (tifs) are messed up. They are also now unsorted and a huge pile of mish mash. If anyone knows a way I might recover my disk/files as they were I will love you forever and name my next child after you.

Is there a possibility that the files were moved over but that because the permissions were for a different user, that is the reason you can't see them? Have you tried looking at them as root?

1 members found this post helpful.

Did you run afoul of the difference between the move and copy commands? move deletes the original files and copy leaves the original files in place.

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Steve Stites

Let's hope hydrurga is correct.
Using mv is a very bad practice - use cp/rsync/... then go back and delete later when you have verified things. Have a look in lost+found for any missing (bits of) files - how to incorporate them correctly is a bigger problem.
As for the naming problem, there are several examples out on the web of scripts to do this - usually requires some analyzing of the files to pull out known data; say exif data from photos. Complicated, prone to error and imprecise generally.

Thanks for the feedback. Sorry it took me so long to get back to this, I was out of town. Unfortunately I did try viewing as root. I also tried putting the drive back in the old computer. I thought I copied and not moved, but as most folders are still there and only one is gone (the important one), I assume I must have accidentally moved that one instead of copied. Let me know if anyone thinks of anything else to try.

I'd still run S.M.A.R.T. on both drives because I had a similar thing happen where I moved a bunch of files onto the hdd and the next day they where bum bum bummmm gone. even though it showed size being used. Then I ran smart on it and it told me to back them up off that hdd because it only 24hrs to live. thing was I couldn't even see the files on that drive. files lost, gone.. no more...