Disappearing Avisynth AVS files on USB Hard Drive

[VideoFanatic]

I keep all my demuxed videos and audio files on a USB hard drive. I also save a project file in my video editor and the avs file in case I need to redo the video in future. When I plugged in my hard drive today I noticed that my project files and AVS files had disappeared for half my videos. Any idea why? This has happened a few times before. What's weird is that the audio and video files are still there.

[Selur]

my thoughts about it:

This has happened a few times before.

you did backup all your stuff on another media , right? (I mean if you external hdd is loosing data that would be the first thing you should do.)

After you backed up everything to a hopefully, functional media, you can:
0. make sure you are not running some sort of cleanUp/speedUp-Tool, which mistakenly thinks you scripts&co are temporal files an can be deleted,...
1. try some hdd recovery software to see if the files can be recovered
2. run hdd health software of the drive manufacturer
3. try to reproduce the problem and monitoring the programs that are running, assuming the hdd is fine to figure out what is happening there (files should not simply disappear)

[jman98]

Does your USB drive have a non-powered enclosure? I have seen a lot of weird problems happen this way. If this is the case then I strongly suggest buying a powered enclosure and using that and seeing if that fixes the problem. My rule is - if it's bigger than a flash drive then it needs a powered enclosure.

[El Heggunte]

......
a USB hard drive.
......

There exists at least one type of USB-to-SATA/IDE adapter which causes data corruption, it's the one that uses the chip named "JM20337" --- so first of all, verify if the adapter you have is a problematic one:

http://bigacid.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/jm20337-read-data-corruption-solution/

http://blog.gsantamarina.com/2009/11/data-corruption-problems-with-numerous.html

[VideoFanatic]

The problem has happened on both my Hitachi 3TB Touro USB 3.0 3.5" and my Freecom 2TB USB hard drives. I don't have any enclosures the USB hard drives are complete units with power supplies.

[Budman1]

Just a thought but make sure something isn't making some of your files hidden? Make sure folder tools/folder options/view says to show all hidden files. Probably not the problem but it would be an easy fix if it was. Then you just need to find out what software did it to you.
Just a thought. Good luck
Budman1

[sanlyn]

Very strange. I'd have to ask, why would .d2v and .avs file extensions be treated as hidden or system files -- or, for that matter, as read-only (although the latter often happens with many transfer operations) ? Also, many users are unaware that clicking in Explorer on the file listing's column headers will sort the list by file type, last-modified date, and so on.

Even with a faulty drive chip as proposed earlier, why would a chip defect involve only some files of one type or another, but not other files of the same type and not other file types? The O.P. didn't say his .avs files were missing, he stated half of the .avs files are missing and half of another type are missing, but the others types are intact.

It could possibly happen if read/write cache is enabled on the USB drive (which it is. in WIndows, by default) and the user is disconnecting the USB plug improperly. We all know how people like to read user guides that come with these drives, don't we? But this assumes that the guide mentions i/o caching. Some guides don't. Disconnecting a USB device in the usual way (by jerking it out whenever you feel like it) sometimes results in data corruption or even damage. But I don't see how even that would effect data files in that kind of pattern, it seems it would be more random.

Don't have an answer for that one. Except this: if I had a huge 2TB or 3TB drive and lost that much data in the same place at the same time, it would be a lesson I wouldn't forget.

[VideoFanatic]

It may well have been because I disconnected the drive by removing the USB cable instead of using safely remove. However I would have only have removed the drive long after any files had been written so I don't understand why any data loss would occur and I don't understand why my video and audio files weren't lost, only my video project files and AVS files which are only 4KB in size.

I find that safely remove rarely works as it nearly always says that it can't remove the drive as something is using it even though nothing is. I've just got Windows 7 and it seems that safely remove works without that problem now.

[lordsmurf]

Just get a new hard drive.
This is often an early sign of the drive going out.

Been there, done that.

[AlanHK]

Run CHKDSK on the disk and see if it reports any problems.

To check if the hard disk is physically failing, use GSmartControl
Run the full test, takes an hour or so.

[sanlyn]

Just get a new hard drive.
This is often an early sign of the drive going out.

Been there, done that.

Yep. Me, too. I bought a cheap funny-brand enclosure some years back. Didn't delete anything, but it had i/o errors that made a mess of several captures. Fortunately I still had the originals elsewhere, but buying a better enclosure solved the problem and I could reformat and re-use the drive itself. Bummer.

[jman98]

It may well have been because I disconnected the drive by removing the USB cable instead of using safely remove.

As an IT professional, I can assure you that this is a really bad idea. You need to safely remove a USB disk device before disconnecting it or you may lose data, which strangely enough is exactly what is happening to you. Hmm....

[VideoFanatic]

Yes but why would it lose small text files but not any other files?

[sanlyn]

The problem has happened on both my Hitachi 3TB Touro USB 3.0 3.5" and my Freecom 2TB USB hard drives. I don't have any enclosures the USB hard drives are complete units with power supplies.

Neither of those drives have their own power supplies. They get their power from your computer's USB ports.

You can try one of the many recovery programs found on the internet, but most of them only look for photo or video files, not files like .avs or .d2v. Or you can run CHKDSK on the drive and see what it comes up with.

[poisondeathray]

What kind of programs or GUI's were you using for the avs files? Note some GUI's may have an option to delete intermediate avs files when processing

[VideoFanatic]

Both drives come with power supplies which connect to the hard drive so I don't know what you're talking about. Where did you get your information from?

Thanks I'm going to run CHKDSK and try the other programs mentioned the next time I restart my PC.

I just created text AVS files in Explorer then dragged them in Simple x264 Launcher. I don't think a program is deleting them as why would it only delete some of them and not all of them?

[sanlyn]

Maybe the Amazon listings I saw of the two USB drives you mentioned didn't show a power cord (they only show a USB cable). Or else they use AC/DC power transformers connected to a wall outlet. OOOPS, there ya go -- I shoulda checked Newegg for pics and stats in the first place (that damn Amazon never gives complete specs of anything!). So you're correct, they connect to DC transformers -- but that's not "self-contained" power, that's external wall-wart power. But, no matter.

Why not create an .avs file in good ole notepad, and save it to the drive? You can also hit "save As.." and save a plain .txt copy as well, and see what happens. I don't use Simple X264 Launcher, so I can't blame that, but...maybe ? ? ?

[VideoFanatic]

I originally created an avs file in Notepad. To save me creating new ones I just copy and paste the avs file to create a new one. For a video I keep my demuxed video, audio, VideoRedo video project file and avs file in a folder on my usb hard drive. The .avs and project file never move from there except for when I cut and paste the avs file it to another location on the drive then I encode the video then I cut and paste it back to the previous location. But the video project file never moves from the original folder so I don't know why I'm losing them! There's no program that could be deleting the video project files.