Lost all the data: "disk does not contain a recognized file system" error in Windows Explorer

I was doing an image backup of my C drive to an external disk and I noticed that the transfer rate was very slow (about 50 Mb/s). I suspected that something was wrong and after several attempts to investigate, there was an error that "the disk does not contain a recognized file system". Thankfully the error referred to the destination disk, not drive C. I decided to run chkdsk /f on the destination disk. Something went past on the command prompt screen about orphaned files and in the end I ended up with the disk apparently in working condition, but with all my files missing.

Hard Disk Sentinel reported that the disk is in perfect health and condition so I guess I can still use it for backups.

Is it possible to recover the missing data on the disk? To be fair, this is not critical for me, because I use the disk for backups with Macrium Reflect and in the end I'll just repeat the backup tasks if I cannot recover the data. However, I'm curious where the data went in the first place.

There are third party software that you can test drive but if there is significant size they typically have fees.

zbook said:

There are third party software that you can test drive but if there is significant size they typically have fees.

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The actual recovery of the data is not crucial to me in this case, although I would naturally be interested to know what caused the data loss. I'll never find out.

Have at least a second backup medium.

Haydon said:

Have at least a second backup medium.

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Actually I do have more than one backup medium. I do daily image backups to three different external disks plus a continuous backup in the cloud. I also backup my data only to another external disk. I suppose that should be enough :)

OK I myself have 3 backup media, no cloud. If one of my backup media had an incident that lost data, I would have replaced it.

I suspect now that it could be a corrupted MFT that caused the disappearance of the data files.

A note, I've had an External USB drive fail and turned out the drive was okay but it was the interface in the case that had failed, pulled the drive out and it could be recognized in a drive dock but most of the files were as RAW.. The package the drive came in said it was for PC and Mac.

Yes it is possible to recover the data if the disk is in readable condition, you can easily restore the data by data recover software.
But you have to make sure to create a image before you start scanning the drive this will help you in fast recovery without damaging the drive

Good advice but this post was back in February.

Berton said:

Good advice but this post was back in February.

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At least it was February of THIS year!

Berton said:

Good advice but this post was back in February.

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It could help someone in the future.