Weird file copy behavior

[farmkid]

So I recently got a new laptop for work, and I'm trying to copy all my documents and other data from the old one to the new one. There is ~175 GB of data I need to copy. I figured the fastest way to do that was to take the hard drive out of the old one, put it into the bay adapter I got for the new one, and copy the files directly from drive to drive.

I did just that, but it did some weird things when I tried to copy. With some files, Windows said it couldn't copy them without administrator permission, although it never gave me an opportunity to give it said permission. There were about 12,000 files totaling about 30 GB that it couldn't copy. I contemplated taking ownership of those files, but decided against it because I didn't want to lose ownership on the old computer until I'm sure I have everything and don't need it on the old one anymore. Instead I booted into Linux and copied the files with no problem. To verify, output the complete directory of the old and new drive to text files and compared them. There were a couple of small differences in the recycle bins of the two drives, but that's it. Both drives had the same number of files on them and the same amount of space used. Now here's the weird part: I took the old drive back out and booted back into Windows. All those files it couldn't copy before are now gone and that 30 GB of space is now reported as empty. I booted back into Linux and Linux can no longer see them either. Those files are no longer visible and both OSs report the space taken by them a free. Whereas the two drives were nearly identical before, there are now ~12,000 files and 30 GB difference between them. Can anyone explain this to me?

 

[smiki]

The files probably got corrupt or your HD is starting to suffer from dementia. I recommend going into safe mode with Windows and then try to access the files that way (if you haven't already). On the new one I mean.

Also, as I understood it, you still have those file on the old drive. If you have enough space on the old drive try copying them on another location on it, manually set permissions to everyone, and then try copying them on your new drive after that. It sounds silly but it might work. I had some weird problems with inaccessible files myself before and this kind of weird tinkering actually worked. Don't ask me why.

 

[farmkid]

Yeah, I think some permissions issue is the problem here. I finally got the files copied over by sharing the drive and copying it through the network. That took care of all the permissions problems and seemed to work fine.

 

[farmkid]

Well, the problem has recurred in such a way that I no longer think it's a permissions issue. At first, I thought that the files were marked as belonging to my account on my old computer and the new computer didn't like that. However, now it seems that may not be the issue after all.

I used Linux to do some work that created a few files. I put those files on the data partition I use for both operating systems then rebooted into Windows to use another program to do some further analysis. They weren't there. I went back to Linux and could see them just fine. Back again to Windows and again they weren't there. Repeat a couple of times, create some new files in Linux to test, try other directories, etc., and the problem is the same. Any files put there by Linux don't show up in Windows. It was time to go to bed, so I gave up until this morning. This morning, I get to work, turn it on, and go look and now those files are there. Before I shut it off for the night those files were not there at all in Windows, and this morning they are. I haven't been in Linux at all between those two times. Any idea what's going on here?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

My initial guess would be some kind of filesystem corruption is going on.

I assume this is an NTFS partition you're working with?

 

[farmkid]

Yes, it's NTFS. I wondered about that as well, but running chkdisk didn't find any errors and didn't make the files show up. They just appeared on their own after a few restarts.

I might wonder a little more about file system corruption, but this is a brand new computer with new installations of both Windows and Linux. The Linux is Fedora 20, and this is the first time I've used that version. I've never seen such trouble with Fedora in the past, but over the weekend I'm going to see how consistent this behavior is and if it's consistent I'll try replacing Fedora 20 with Fedora 19 and maybe Ubuntu or something else to see if it may be some kind of bug in the new Fedora.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, could be there are changes to the NTFS driver in Fedora 20. Stuff like that happens fairly regularly, sometimes with weird and inconsistent results.