External Hard drive wiped

1/6/18 | self

[pabianice]

I use an external hard drive to backup the files on my C drive. Have had it for years. Turned it on this AM and it is blank. It is formatted but all the saved files (about 100GB) are gone. Poof. Can anyone help explain what happened? Thanks.

[StolarStorm]

I suspect you are correct. If they had told me, I would have given them the drives. No mess, no fuss. I'm surprised they never talked to me about it. If they classified it quietly... understandable. My father had an interesting role before he retired and my uncle was high level FBI, so I was already under some checks.

I was pretty damn impressed with them for finding the files, removing them while leaving the file name in the directory table and so forth. Professionals.

[Justa]

My guess is it’s an app that downloads onto the computer. When the targeted media reconnects it wipes the contents via the main computer. It would need to be automated to be effective.

[Darth Mall]

BFL

[BereanBrain]

Not talking about lifespan due to wearout.
If you don’t believe what i am saying, do your own research.

If you write to flash (SSD) and it stays unplugged for 1 year+ chances are it won’t be there later (this is due to the way flash works). It’s like DRAM, except that it takes years for the charge stored to leak away.

Mose people are focused on writes - but that’s NOT the problem for retention media (i.e. stuff sitting on shelves).

Hey, maybe you need to learn the hard way.....BTW, i have been using computers for 30+ years and have only had ONE hdd failure (i am talking my personal machines here), and have had 2 flash media failures (both due to sitting on shelves too long).

[mrsmith]

Thanks for reporting your outcome. So many people don’t and it seems the least they could do!