30GB of space disappears on External Drive after failed DMG copy

[MP23]

I have a 298.1 GB external Western Digital hard drive connected to my iMac by a USB 2.0 cable. It is formatted in NTFS-3G so I can use it with both my PC and Mac. Yesterday in Disk Utility I created a 50GB 256-bit encrypted DMG and told Disk Utility to save it on a folder in my external drive. It got to about 20GB and then my house's power went out. A few hours later when the power came back on, I turned on my computer, and the available space on my external hard drive went down from about 100GB to 68.21GB.

The first thing I thought was that the DMG transfer ended prematurely so I should just find and delete the incomplete DMG from the hard drive. So I went to the folder I saved it in and it was not there. I checked all the folders and I couldn't find any DMG in there. Then I went to the root of the external drive and used Get Info to find the space each folder took up. It adds up to 194.12 GB. So I subtracted 194.12 from 298.1 and got 103.98. If I'm supposed to have 103.98 GB, why do I only have 68.21 GB available? I double and triple checked the size of everything on the disk and I still should have about 30GB more than I do. The 30GB just disappeared.

I tried verifying the disk in Disk Utility and got:
-----------
2009-06-14 11:12:33 -0400: Verifying volume “SHADUSMEDIA”
Starting verification tool: 2009-06-14 11:12:33 -0400
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for LOG_LEVEL: 2
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for UBLIO_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for PROBE_DISABLED: 0
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for MOUNT_RDISKS_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for NFCONV_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for ALWAYS_RECOVER: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: ntfs-3g script invoked with command line "/System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-3g.fs/ntfs-3g.util" "-v" "/dev/disk1s1"
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Invoking user: MP
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: [Verify] Entering function Verify.
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: ** No NTFS file system checks have been implemented yet.
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: ** Reporting that the volume is fine without checking anything.
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: [Verify] Reporting that the volume is fine, even though that may not be the case (no fs checks performed).
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: [Verify] Returning from function Verify.
Verifying tool completed: 2009-06-14 11:12:42 -0400
------------
So it appears that it's only telling me that it's fine without even checking. I then tried repair disk and got the error message:
------------
2009-06-14 11:14:25 -0400: Verify and Repair volume “SHADUSMEDIA”
Starting repair tool: 2009-06-14 11:14:25 -0400
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for LOG_LEVEL: 2
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for UBLIO_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for PROBE_DISABLED: 0
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for MOUNT_RDISKS_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for NFCONV_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for ALWAYS_RECOVER: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: ntfs-3g script invoked with command line "/System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-3g.fs/ntfs-3g.util" "-y" "/dev/disk1s1"
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Invoking user: MP
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] Entering function Repair...
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] Marking volume to be checked at next Windows boot.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] "/usr/local/bin/ntfsfix" "" currently disabled.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: ** /usr/local/bin/ntfsfix has been disabled because of volume corruption issues.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: ** If you still want to try fixing your volume, use /usr/local/bin/ntfsfix from the command line...
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] Returning from function Repair with FSUR_INVAL.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400:
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Disk Utility stopped repairing “SHADUSMEDIA” because the following error was encountered:

Filesystem verify or repair failed.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400:
------------
I tried restarting my iMac and disconnected and reconnecting the cable and that didn't work. I plugged it into my PC and it still says that all the files on my external drive add up to 194.12 GB. Which still means I should have 103.98 GB of free space instead of 68.21 GB.

So I'm stumped now and not quite sure what to do. Here is the information about the external drive from Disk Utility:
----------
Name : SHADUSMEDIA
Type : Volume

Disk Identifier : disk1s1
Mount Point : /Volumes/SHADUSMEDIA
File System : Windows NT Filesystem (NTFS-3G)
Connection Bus : USB
Device Tree : IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/USB7@1D,7
Writable : Yes
Capacity : 298.1 GB (320,070,288,384 Bytes)
Free Space : 68.3 GB (73,348,239,360 Bytes)
Used : 229.8 GB (246,722,048,512 Bytes)
Number of Files : 145,472
Number of Folders : 0
Owners Enabled : Yes
Can Turn Owners Off : No
Can Repair Permissions : No
Can Be Verified : Yes
Can Be Repaired : Yes
Can Be Formatted : Yes
Bootable : No
Supports Journaling : No
Journaled : No
Disk Number : 1
Partition Number : 1
------------
You can see on there it says I've used 229.8 GB, when I've actually only used 194.12 GB. Here are the specs from System Profiler for my iMac:
------------
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM51.0090.B09
SMC Version: 1.8f2
Serial Number: QP6450GKVUX
--------------
I'm running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6. If you need any more information just ask, I'd really like to get my 30GB back. Thanks in advance.

 

[KingYaba]

This ought to do it. http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/

 

[MP23]

Thanks. I'll try that and see if it works.

 

[MP23]

No, I still can't find the DMG in OmniSweeper, and all the files still add up to 194.1 GB. Here's a screenshot (sorry about the arrows).

 

[MP23]

Help?

Can anyone help?

 

[Fishrrman]

RE: 30gb of space disappears

RE:
"Can anyone help?"

You could try DiskWarrior, but that's a commercial product.

Here's something else you could try:
1. Download "TinkerTool". It's free.
2. Use TinkerTool's option to make all invisible files visible.
3. Search for the file or files you _think_ are the problem, then delete them.
4. WARNING WARNING WARNING: better be careful about _what_ you delete.

Sounds like you have some invisible "temp" files that might be there.

Final option:
Since the drive is an external, you might:
1. Manually copy all the _visible_ files on it to another drive
2. Re-initialize the external drive
3. Re-copy your files _back to_ the drive.
4. I'd suggest a "finder copy" rather than a "backup" using a commercial program (the commercial programs might also copy the invisible files you're trying to get RID of).

- John
NOTE: I made a mistake with the product name, and have re-edited this post. The free app you need to make files visible is named "TinkerTool"...

 

[MP23]

Thanks!
I tried DiskWarrior and got this (it probably doesn't want to work with NTFS-3G):

I'll try TechTools too.

 

[MP23]

I tried DiskWarrior and got this (it probably doesn't want to work with NTFS-3G):

So I'll try TechTools next.

 

[Consultant]

Disk utility does not repair NTFS volumes because NTFS is a MS proprietary format .

So why don't you delete the temporaty hidden files?

 

[MP23]

I got rid of the invisible files too, didn't make a difference.

 

[MP23]

Hey I'm getting some interesting results with the program GrandPerspective:

It looks like there's about 35GB of miscellaneous space (the gray), but it's not letting me do anything about it.

 

[dukeman]

Try popping it onto your PC and running chkdsk /f from command prompt.

If it grabs drive letter E:

Start / Run / cmd.exe

chkdsk e: /f

sit back and watch the show.

 

[MP23]

Dukeman you did it! All my space is back. Thank you very much! And thanks to everyone else who helped too.