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I'm on Windows 10 Pro x64 20190, and I have multiple SSD/HDD drives active. One of my non-system drives is a Crucial CT256M550SSD1.

Last night, I was updating my system firmware and drivers. After successfully installing new firmware — for chipset, which I assume should not have any impact to the storage in question — I reboot the system and immediately noticed that for some reason, I have a ton of files that disappeared from one of the high-traffic directories I utilize on that drive.

I don't have File History enabled — and considering the size and number of files that directory held, it wouldn't be pragmatic to do so even in hindsight — but I was able to see through TestDisk there are still traces of the files in there, but considering the sheer volume it'd be a nightmare to have to manually recover them one-by-one.

I'd like to find out first and foremost, what in the world could have caused this?? Not a single error message, warning, nothing; everything just disappeared, and if it weren't for my usage and familiarity with the contents, this could happen to anything anywhere and I wouldn't have ever been the wiser?? Very off-putting (I work in an industry where full traceability and document control & retention are very important). How can I prevent this from occurring again, short of actually dedicating what already limited storage capacity I have for additional non-systemic file redundancy?

EDIT: UPDATE #1

Here's some updates, as well as additional steps I took previously but forgot to mention:
  • I've already ran dskchk as well as reviewed SMART stats, both of which came up with nothing out of the norm.
  • I ran memtest86 to rule out DDR4 issues, came back with zero errors.
  • I reviewed perfmon /rel and found some entries: Screenshot1
  • Of the entries, only this one was indicative of hardware error: Screenshot2
Arctiic
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2 Answers2

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I work in an industry where full traceability and document control & retention are very important).

The good news is that Windows has many logs that you can view.

It might just a little bit of time to go through them but, there are many Windows Log files that you can view in order to gain a better picture of what might have happened.

Viewing Windows Update History using Reliability Monitor

Press Window Key + R to open the run dialog. Type perfmon /rel and press enter to open the Reliability Monitor. You can look at the captured events, including ones for Windows Update, and you can see if any updates occurred for your disk. You can also see if any Windows Errors were reported.

Checking for Errors Using Event Viewer

Press Windows Key + R to open the run dialog. Type eventvwr and press enter to open the Event Viewer. Expand the category labeled Windows Logs in the panel on the left-hand side. Browse inside either the Application or System logs. The list should already be sorted by most recent event first. Scroll down and look at the events near the time when the update occurred to see if there were any unexpected faults or errors. You can also use the panel on the right hand side to filter the list to just show errors.

iskyfire
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Purely by chance I just stumbled across this answer, which happened to catch my attention as it fits the behavior I was observing with my SSD.

Arctiic
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