Large Backup disappeared when scanning

[JRBOB]

Version info Windows 10 with April patch applied, and latest windows update.

Ver 3.8.3.2965

Comp 1.0.613

Update 1.0.11768

Early this morning I was scanning a previous 23+ GB backup on a USB Seagate drive with Malwarebytes, since it was such a large scan, I started the scan (Threat Scan) and went to bed.  Before going to bed I disconnected (unplugged) from my network at home and disabled my WIFI on the laptop.  This morning I look at the summary found that it only took 13m, to scan 458 thousand files with no threats found.  I went back to the USB device, and checked it only to find that the entire backup could not be found in file explorer.  Needless to say I am concerned, when this much data vanishes from a device.

Has anyone seen this problem before.  I was running the trial version of Premium when this happened.

jrbob

[Malwarebytes]

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[exile360]

Greetings,

The Threat scan does not check any files on drives other than the primary C drive where Windows is installed, with the exception of items actually running in memory as those are checked regardless of their location.  That said, I'd advise disconnecting and reconnecting the drive to see if that resolves the issue.  It may have gone into a sleep state due to non-use due to the power saving features in Windows.  If your data still doesn't show up, try disconnecting the device and restarting your system, then reconnecting the device to see if your files are now present on the drive.

Please let us know how it goes.

Thanks

[JRBOB]

Did all you suggested with no change, looks like 23+ GB of data is gone.  Would have been nice to know that Malware only works with the C drive, maybe I missed it in the licensing agreement.

TO OTHERS OUT THERE USING MALWARE, REMEMBER IT DOES NOT WORK ON EXTERNAL DRIVES!!!

 

[exile360]

It works fine with external drives, you just have to select the appropriate scan type.  The default Threat scan looks for active threats installed on the system, not dormant threats that cannot harm your system because they aren't active and are on a secondary or external drive.  To scan an external drive all you need to do is click the Scan tab and select the Custom Scan option then click Configure and check the box next to the drive(s) you wish to scan, or you can simply right-click on a particular folder or drive that you wish to scan in Windows Explorer and select Scan with Malwarebytes.  Just keep in mind that it will take a very long time if there is a lot of data on the drive.

[JRBOB]

I did just that, I right clicked on the folder name for the backup and selected scan with Malwarebytes. It appears to have scanned 436 thousand files and yes it may have went into sleep mode after 13 min. But it could not have possibly only taken 13 min, when I did a scan earlier in the evening of a 25 GB backup folder (same as this issue) and it took over an hour to scan 454 thousand files with no data loss.

jrbob

[exile360]

What kind of data was on this drive?  I'm just curious because some types of files are scanned much more quickly than others (for example media files such as images, audio and video files as well as documents; archives and executables take the longest).

[Porthos]

3 minutes ago, JRBOB said:

I did a scan earlier in the evening of a 25 GB backup folder (same as this issue) and it took over an hour to scan 454 thousand files with no data loss.

Sounds like that external was ready to fail. It happens. I never keep one copy that is important to me on a single device no mattter if its internal or external.

[exile360]

38 minutes ago, Porthos said:

Sounds like that external was ready to fail. It happens. I never keep one copy that is important to me on a single device no mattter if its internal or external.

That's my suspicion as well.  I can't recall any cases where Malwarebytes scanning killed a drive.  It's also possible (though far less likely) that there was some kind of power issue during the night that corrupted the drive.  Either way I'd suggest unplugging the drive until you are ready to attempt data recovery on it if you need to retrieve the data.  I'm not sure how good the recovery tools that are available to consumers are, but professional data recovery services are quite expensive so if the files on that drive aren't too important and/or you have them backed up elsewhere then it would probably not be worth going that route.