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I copied 2TB of data on an exfat disk from a dying Mac. Then on Windows this data is (almost) missing
(discuss.tchncs.de)
I have an old mac with a dying hfs hdd with failing SMART. I copied 2tb of data on an exfat drive but windows only sees only 3 directories and 80gb. Where's my other stuff? Now after I did that long copy session that lasted a whole day, the disk died from stress and the mac doesn't boot anymore. Even if it boots, i don't think the disk can last another full copy session...
Testdisk can show the data, there's a way to tell windows that the files are there?
I don't have an answer for certain, but I suspect this may be the usual problem with windows not being able to see or recognize certain file systems. If you have a Linux live drive available, or a VM, you could peek at it through there to see if it's actually been copied
it looks like fast boot in order to save me 10 seconds on boot restored the FAT state from before the copy
i booted on another operating system and i see all the files, but the contents are all wrong, looks like everything is gone...
You might look for a data recovery tool. I've had luck in the past using them. Also, if you still have the Mac and it wasn't the drive that died you can remove the drive and use a USB HDD adapter to connect it to another machine.
edit: just read the text again and saw it was the drive dying, bummer.... Data loss sucks.
An additional problem is that the Mac is stuck to MacOS 10.7, so even if it boots again, I can't install anything because "this operating system is not supported". I would need to find some decade old recovery program somehow. Or find another Mac and some USB enclosure