"PoolPart" folders turned into files....

[RadamFG]

I've got TBs on the line and need help. I have online backup, but at TBs would take forever to restore.

Just rebooted my Windows 10 Pro machine and Drivepool has dropped a bunch of drives. The drives show up as both missing from the pools AND available to be added to pools. When I look at the PoolPart folders for each dropped drive, they are in fact not folders but extensionless files instead.

Is there any way I can restore the "files" back to being folders? File system is NTFS, "poolpart" files showing 0 bytes, but the "Disk Management" app shows the drives partially full, though not as full as expected.

Thanks in advance,

Radam

[Shane]

Folders getting "converted" into "files" can happen when NTFS gets corrupted, or after a CHKDSK "repair" (which Windows sometimes does on its own) fixes (what it considers) damage to the file system in its own particular way. Simplifying, what can happen is your data gets "moved" into system "found.*" folders and placeholders get left behind.

If you adjust File Explorer (or whatever you're using) to be able to see hidden and system-protected files/folders, hopefully there should be one or more folders named "found.*" (where "*" is a number) in your drives and there might be one or more "dir*.chk" folders inside those, containing your poolpart folders and/or what was inside them. You may need to take ownership of, and grant yourself control over, these system folders to be able to access their contents (e.g. right-clicking the folder, Properties option, Security tab, Advanced...)

Hopefully that's where all your data has ended up - but since you aren't seeing them as full as you'd expect... you may need to recover what you can and then restore the rest from your online backup, or you may decide that it's safer to restore everything from your known-good backup.

[RadamFG]

Thanks Shane, yeah I've got hidden items set to be visible.... nothing "found" or otherwise, just the "converted poolpart files".... pretty sure it's borked.

[Shane]

Do you have System items also set to be visible? That's a separate attribute to Hidden.

[RadamFG]

Hmmm... if you mean the "protected operating system files", no I hadn't.

Now that I do I see the Recycle Bin and System Volume Information folders, and the poolpart "file" and nothing else.

If you meant something different, please let me know (and thanks for your attention to this, I do appreciate it).

[Shane]

That's what I meant, and with nothing showing it does sound borked.  Glad you've got a backup!

[RadamFG]

Yup, I even tried Recuva but nothing was retrievable.

At least now I can wipe the drives to make room to restore everything.... over the next few months probably.... sigh.

Thanks again for help though.