Updates to storage devices often cause issues like missing files or data loss.
Updates to storage devices often cause issues like missing files or data loss.
(I'm sorry this post is a long read but I want to provide as much detail as possible) I've been observing some behaviour recently that I can't find any solution for, nor much information about (Although I have found past posts which detail the same issue, none lead to a solution). The behaviour in question is as stated in the title, specifically occuring when making changes between two different systems. A breakdown is as follows: An internal or external SSD is removed from a powered off system and connected externally to a secondary system. Changes are made - some files are deleted, some new files are added and others have changes made. (For example: A game drive has some games removed, some new games added, and the ini settings for a couple of games adjusted). Once the changes are complete, the drive is safely disconnected from the secondary system and returned back to it's original system. With the drive reconnected, the original system is now powered on. At this stage the drive will seemingly revert to it's state before any changes were made. To be specific, the following can be observed: Deleted files will have returned but are usually corrupted, New files will be missing, changes made to existing files will either have been reverted or the file will now be corrupt, lastly, the remaining disk space shown in explorer will reflect the changes made (E.g. showing more space available if files were just deleted, or showing less space available if files were just added). Any insight to the cause of this behaviour would be greatly appreciated but before responding please also note the following: If changes to an external drive are made and then reconnected to the original system while it is powered on, any changes will be correctly reflected. This means that the reversion of files is seemingly taking place during the Windows boot process. This behaviour has occurred on mutiple completely different systems, each with fresh Windows installations. Additionally, this behaviour has occurred across multiple different freshly formatted drives, both M.2 SSDs and SATA SSDs (If you would like to try replicating this behaviour then one of the drives used was a Kingston A400 SATA SSD). After the drive has seemingly reverted to a prior state, connecting the drive back to another system will continue to show files in their reverted state and will not correct the issue. I am aware that the issue is likely to do with file caching. Despite this, disabling disk caching within Windows does not appear to resolve the issue. Scanning the drive for errors (which Windows will detect) does not resolve the issue and will not correct any inconsistency between the files on the drive and how much 'available space' is shown in file explorer. No cloud services are being used. Many thanks to anyone who even reads all of this.
I've encountered a similar problem too. My main OS runs Linux, but I use Windows mainly for gaming. There are a couple of folders on my C drive that seem to reappear unexpectedly—sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It doesn’t happen when I switch to Linux. Based on what I’ve read, it might be related to search indexing. I’ve disabled the indexing temporarily in those areas, and so far it’s not affecting performance, though it might slow things down a bit. With an SSD, it shouldn’t be too long. Personally, it’s not a big deal unless it starts creating random files everywhere. If someone who uses Windows regularly can help fix this properly, that would be great.
These operations often switch data to read-only mode. This ensures you can still access the information, preventing new writes from making it permanently lost.
Thanks for the responses, they're really appreciated. This is certainly something I'll give a go. I'm not sure if search indexing could cause existing files to be corrupted too but it will still be worth seeing if disabling it causes any change in the behaviour I'm seeing. I could be mistaken but don't believe it's a fault with any of the drives I've been using. I've had the issue occur on at least 3 different drives (2 being SATA SSDs and the other being an M.2 SSD), and the drives also appear to be perfectly healthy after reformatting and multiple months of use.