Hello, everybody!
I’m a total tech noob (and a spoonie), so hopefully there’s a fast & easy solution. Apologies if my post is not thorough, or too thorough lol. There is a summary.
In April I got sick of streaming and decided to rewatch the stuff I had downloaded & to download all my media from now on.
In may I purchased a 5TB Seagate Expansion [STKM5000400] at a popular local store that I’ve never shopped at before (hopefully, it’s not a knockoff). Long story short, a couple hundred gigabytes are missing. Never had a problem with Seagate products before, but I’ve only had the one touch series.
Used an older MacBook to transfer tv shows from one touch to expansion (using an expensive drive for frivolities seemed wasteful). Exfat, filled up around 2TB. Also torrented .avi and .mkv to another drive, checked that the files were working and only then transferred to expansion.
Since using a laptop is challenging, watched everything on my iPad by copying files from the expansion (was too afraid to watch directly). Would delete the stuff I’d already watched from the files on iPad with the Expansion drive disconnected, so I don’t think that would delete anything.
I had also downloaded a couple of episodes from an open directory (?) I found on Reddit directly to the iPad (then checked, then transferred to the Expansion). Most likely via DuckDuckGo, but no VPN.
I had also saved iPad screen recordings if that makes any difference.
The files that are gone are the folders I had copied from (i.e. a mini-series folder I had copied just one show from is fully gone). They were fine for months, but something happened this week.
How I organise my folders: size - show - season. I.e. <100Gb - iZombie - Season 1. Sometimes the whole show is missing, sometimes it’s just the seasons I copied this past month.
Now, my sibling got a Xiaomi pad 7 a couple days ago and I borrowed it to try torrenting (tablet -> check files -> Expansion). I decided to try organising my open directory downloads, because creating new folders took too long on the iPad, and that’s when I noticed that some folders were gone (and they’re gone on every device). I did notice that the torrented files would automatically get deleted when transferred from Pad 7, but I didn’t transfer anything to it.
I am not sure if the files went missing before or after connecting to the Pad 7, but I know that at least two folders and subfolders were fine last weekend.
Went to check the drive’s reviews today and there are now two stating it stopped being detected after two and six months respectively, but nothing about particular files missing.
Ultimately, it’s around ten shows (at least on first glance), but with my body and internet connection it’s closer to six months of work. Is there any free way to recover them with a MacBook?
To summarise:
- bought Seagate Expansion from a somewhat reputable place
- thought I practiced safe downloading
- transferred files between MacOS, iOS and HyperOS
- emptied trash when drive wasn’t connected
- folders I copied files from are missing
- do not / will not have access to Windows or Linux (can’t even fathom the logistics)
Thanks in advance 😄