Windows 10: Microsoft, please explain to me how my 4GB USB drive suddenly holds PETABYTES of data.

This isn’t a joke.I plugged in a genuine 4GB USB stick. Windows Explorer shows ~3.72GB total, which is expected.But once I click on Details, the system goes completely insane.It starts showing:0 Bytes in System&Reserved0 Bytes in Installed apps1,67 PB in Documents305 TB in Pictures22,7 TB in Music86,4 TB in Videos0 Bytes in Mail0 Bytes in Maps0 Bytes in Temporary filesAnd 164 PB under "Other"This is just physically NOT POSSIBLE!I CAN'T imagine that I have the computer and the storage like from Microsoft or something else but would be actually good if I had THAT much storage capacity.., b

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Lost data from hard drive, what to do now?

Well, I'm sorry to hear that it's a WD My Passport that failed on you, @tomhenry ! *Frown
I'd recommend you to try using a different USB cable with it and see if that will help your system to detect it without it disconnecting.
I'd also suggest you to go to Disk Management and see how the drive is listed there. It won't hurt to check up on the health and SMART status of the HDD by running the QUICK and EXTENDED tests from the WD's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics. Here's a link to the available software: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=11ZOpD

Give these troubleshooting steps a try and keep us posted with the results!
SuperSoph_WD

 

Transcend Announces JetFlash 560 USB Flash Drive

$15 for a 4GB USB 2.0 drive?!?!?! Are they nuts?!?!? I paid $14 for my Super Talent 8GB USB 3.0 drive!

 

Urgent! All files on my USB drive's suddenly disappeared

Hi. Thank you, I did as instructed and only two files are listed. I can actually see them myself after opting to show hidden files in File Explorer:

The drive did contain hundreds, if not thousands of user files. - - - Updated - - - Actually, on the first screenshot (second picture) it's open, that can be seen in the address bar (even though on the left 'my computer' is highlighted in blue, no idea why. Too bad MS forces local languages upon users, I would have opted for English but instead it chose Bulgarian for me... I still hope I can make the situation clear enough) Anyway, I took a new screenshot as suggested:

- - - Updated - - - I just looked up the drive's status in Disk management, it's listed as healthy, active, primary partition.