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I have copied a folder with a bunch of files onto a 2 TB USB drive, which I formatted as NTFS. Some time later, I inserted the USB drive into the computer to look at the files. When I opened the directory, the files weren't there. The directory was still there, but all the files have disappeared. I tried to navigate to that directory within the USB drive. I was able to cd into that directory, but ls returned an input/output error. Attempting to create a new file using the touch command also produced the same error. What is going on?

/media/user/0EB2CB2FB2CB1A5B/monthly_reports$ ls
ls: reading directory '.': Input/output error
/media/user/0EB2CB2FB2CB1A5B/monthly_reports$ touch file.txt
touch: cannot touch 'file.txt': Input/output error

I inserted the USB drive into my Windows PC as an experiment. When I attempt to open that directory using the File Explorer, a message box pops up:

Location not available
F:\monthy_reports is not accessible.
The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.
Galaxy
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  • Most likely you forgot to safely remove the drive before unplugging it. – gronostaj Jul 26 '22 at 04:58
  • @gronostaj No, that's not it, this happened when the drive was already plugged in. – Galaxy Jul 26 '22 at 06:35
  • Where did you get this drive? What type of USB drive is it? Is it a new drive or an old one? – Mokubai Jul 26 '22 at 10:29
  • @Mokubai I got this drive on Amazon. It is a 2TB USB drive. It is a new drive. – Galaxy Jul 26 '22 at 15:57
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    Was the drive suspiciously cheap? What type of drive is it? A 2TB USB "stick" would surprise me and could be fake, but an HDD would be normal. For example I would expect this to be a fake drive and probably a 16GB stick in disguise, while I would trust this one – Mokubai Jul 26 '22 at 16:53
  • @Mokubai Yes, the USB drive was a cheap one, with a price comparable to the first one. However when plugged in the USB drive and examined it's properties in the file explorer, it was listed as the full 2TB. – Galaxy Jul 26 '22 at 17:09
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    Many of those drives have a fake capacity that appears at first glance to be correct but then appears to overwrite or "lose" data as you write to them. Some info is at How is the capacity of a harddisk faked? as well as https://superuser.com/questions/1169039/information-on-how-fake-usb-drives-work – Mokubai Jul 26 '22 at 17:15
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    Try running h2testw on it to find out if the drive is "good" or fake. Some other alternatives at https://www.geckoandfly.com/22803/detect-fake-usb-flash-drives-sd-cards-ssd-disk/ – Mokubai Jul 26 '22 at 17:24
  • @Galaxy It's a fake. Please report it. – ChanganAuto Jul 26 '22 at 17:50

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