Windows 10: 0 bytes Files, Drive failure

Hi, I have recently met a problem with my Data Drive.

Alot of my Files have been appearing as 0kb and unusable, many of them video files that I remember watching just fine a few months ago (2-3 months).

Some game files have also been turning 0kb, making some of my Steam games crash and unable to run until I replace the 0kb files.

I have ran a full checkup using my anti-virus and found nothing, and I've used a few recovery methods I found during my research.

So far I have made little progress, I have found some of my lost game files in a FOUND. folder but most of my video files are nowhere to be found, and I still am not sure of the cause for this problem.

In terms of my Drives, I have two 2TB mechanical Drives in RAID, one of the Drives has been failing recently (bad Head) but the RAID has transfered my files to the working, is it possible that some may be lost during the process ? Do I need to change my Drives ASAP ?


if any other specification is needed, I will try to reply as fast as I can.


Thanks in advance to anyone willing to help.

:)

 

Bad Image Errors - dll files changing to 0 bytes


Hi
Have an unusual problem (to me anyway)

Last week I got "Bad Image" errors with Adobe Lightroom (the program had worked OK previously). Two .dll files were listed as corrupt and in Explorer both were shown has having 0 bytes size. Re-installation resolved the problem.
Today I have had the same "bad image" error with another program. Techsmith SnagIt. Once again it was .dll files and they show in explorer as 0 bytes. The timestamp on the 0 byte dlls is the time of the error i.e. today (not when the files were installed).

What I've done so far :
Ran McAfee viruscan across all disks - no problems reported.
Ran Malwarebytes - no problems reported

Went to the properties for the disk drive and under "Tools" ran error check - nothing found
The disk is an SSD so I went to Samsung Magician which shows drive condition as good and S.M.A.R.T. shows wear levelling count at Current Value 99. I do not use Rapid Mode.

The problems are happening on a Samsung 850 Evo 500GB

Any suggestions welcome

Dave

 

NTFS problem: 0 byte file but "Size On Disk: 3.98 GB"

By using a Python script, I managed to mistakenly create a 4GB file on an NTFS USB drive with a colon in the filename. The resulting file name was all of the text up until the colon, but the file is listed as being 0 bytes. BUT when I check the file properties
it says "Size On Disk: 3.98 GB (4,282,056,704 bytes)". When I used a file recovery program such as Recuva and MiniTool Power Data Recovery, all 4GB seem to copy to another drive, but it still shows that it's 0 bytes (Size On Disk 3.98 GB).

Any advice as to what I could try next to fix this issue?

The file cannot be replaced easily so I'd like to get it back.

I'm not averse to low level disk editing if it comes to that.

Thanks in advance!

 

How to Delete 0 Byte Files

Hello S_and_S,

The 0 byte files I deleted resulted from incomplete video downloads. These particular plain white files "did not exist or was moved" and could not be deleted. Deleting them was a simple matter of housekeeping.