Windows 10: exFAT 1tb Thumb Drive showing files but they are missing

I backed up some files to a 1tb thumb drive I never had a issue with. The files copied over with no issues.I went to check on some of them today & although the sub-folders are there, they are empty. The odd thing about this is it shows ~480gb used in the Disk Management Properties but I'm not sure where these ~480gb of files are at!I've tried different ports, I've tried rebooting and different ports again. Even plugging directly into the back of my computer. Same results.Oh...and I did try the thumb drive on another computer. Same results. What can I do to get these files back?Thank

:)

 

usb drive broken after trying to format it as exfat

I needed my 64gb usb thumb drive at full capacity after using it as windows format drive which made it 32gb drive. Windows showed a window saying format failed while I was waiting it to be in exfat format. I tried to use disk manager and list disk thing but It doesn't show up anywhere. Windows 11 just deleted it

 

Files inside exFAT formatted USB flash drive are missing.

WHAT?? I can't believe I'm hearing this from a "Microsoft" person!!!

FAT32 and ExFAT are legacy file format systems which are universally supported (less so for ExFAT) and certainly all Windows including the latest Windows 10 support them.

Only limitation from the latest bunch of Windows (i.e., from 7 onwards) is that it needs the system drive to be NTFS. All other (external) drives can be either NTFS, ExFAT or FAT32.

In fact, most of the thumb drives come pre-formatted with FAT32 till date because that's what is supported by several other devices (read TV, media-box, etc).

@Mushthaq,

It's more than a year now and hence not sure if this will help you. It seems like the issue you are facing is due to ExFAT which is not as universally supported as the FAT32. It's possible that the device you used to copy files into the drive Vs the one
that you are trying to read has compatibility issues. Switch over to FAT32 (if you don't have files larger than 4 GB) and this issue should go away.

Cheers!

 

Formating to exFAT

Hi Taylor,

If you want to format an external hard drive or USB flash drive in exFAT, you can follow these steps:

• Press and hold Windows key + x on your keyboard. This open the context menu.
• Select Command Prompt (Admin).
• Type format g: /FS:exFAT and then Enter to begin formatting the G drive as exFAT

For any query, feel free to reach us.