Help with portable disk word documents unreadable

[Vic_Portugal]

Hello,

My name is Victor from Portugal. The reason of this post have to do with a problem I had with a portable disk I have that when passing some word documents to my computer something wrong happen because suddenly my portable disk was completely empty. All my files, documents, videos, .jpeg photos…simply vanished.

I looked in Internet all available programs free and non-free versions. My first option was RECUVA free program because I have the Ccleaner free version that works very well so from my point a view … trustable!.

 So I run the program and I manage to recover almost everything (videos, photos) except many word documents that come like this:

Please see attach image1 named “Resultado”

The name of the documents were misplaced and when open they all look like this:

Please see attach image2 named “wreak havoc”

This happen only to some documents, there are documents that despite the name disappeared and changed into numbers they are perfect. 
So I went back to internet and look for other programs that could help me with this problem but up till now I could not find any program or help that cleared tell me that it possible to recover these documents to a “readable” stage.

I tried some seemingly harmless solutions given by people that seems had same problem (like open the document and save with new extension, etc) but nothing work out.

Then I find you youtube video posted in 2012 with the Windows Repair (all-in-one) Tool and I wonder if this would help to my problem. This is my question and if this program you have developed is not indicate to my problem my second and last question would be to ask if you know any program capable of solving this.

I really appreciate your help because after this or I try the solution you may suggest or I forget the subject knowing that I will lose those documents forever.

The problem occur with a Verbatim 3.0 1Tb Portable Disk from where I was transferring the word documents to my computer Asus Intelcore i7 2.80GHz 8,0GB RAM 64bit

Note: My word documents are usually made on my tablet Windows RT 8.1 64Gb that I use in my business trips.
Hope you may help. Thanks in advanced.
Kindest regards,
Victor Oliveira

[Shane]

Either the disk is bad and so the files got messed up or the crypto virus hit you, which encrypts all your files and documents.

Have you scanned your system yet to make sure you didnt get hit by that virus?

Shane

[Vic_Portugal]

Hello Shane,

Thnak you for your comments.

The disk is "brand new" and I have in all my computers the ESET NOD32 anti-virus. That occurs to me and I run my anti-virus and the result came clean. 

Actually, the only thing hard to explain is how this happen when the only thing I was doing was transferring a document to my computer like I did hundred's times and not all documents were affected, many others were undamage. This is something I cannot explain at for now but I'm trying.

Thank you for your attention,
Vic

[Shane]

Even a new hard drive can have bad sectors. Sometimes it has a rough ride in shipping lol

So the thing to do is to do a chkdsk on the drive and have it look for any bad sectors. If any bad sectors are found then get the drive replaced under warrenty

Shane

[Vic_Portugal]

Hello Shane,

Again thank you for your prompt response.
 
I agree with you and will run the “chkdsk” cmd. There’s something I remember now and maybe this will help to clear this “mystery”. About a month ago I was in South Korea and I was trying to  copy a film from a coating machine assembly that was huge (9.3 GB), and there message on the manager’s computer saying that there wasn’t’ enough space on my portable disk for that video which was odd because there was 648GB free space available, so more than enough. The guy said that the problem was that my disk was in FAT32 and if changed to NTFS it would accept the video because NTFS allows bigger size files. As he also said that such action would not interfere with the files I had in the disk I let him do it. As far I recall he went for the Prompt-DOS and change everything there. 

Do not know if this could be a plausible cause for what happen? Do you think that if I do backwards NTFS>FAT32 will do the trick?

Thank again for your quick answers and apologizes for my “late” answers. I think this is a north-American website, which depending on your location there is a time difference between USA and Eastern Europe of 6H East coast, 7H Mid-coast and 8H from the West-coats. Towards Portugal – where I am located - and UK, we have even -1H to the rest of the rest of Eastern Europe.

Kindest regards,
Victor Oliveira

[Shane]

Fat32 file systems can only handle 2 or 4GB max sized files. So normal format to use is NTFS which is the normal file system for windows and it can handle much larger file sizes.

But to change the file system from one to the other normally requires formatting the drive into the new file system, which means you need to backup the files to another drive first and then move them back.

Some 3rd party software can change the files system with the files still on there but those dont always go as planned and you can end up with corrupt data.

So it is possible that is how the files got corrupt

Shane