Had almost 300 GB worth of files with random names on my computer, and now they are gone. Any idea what they were and where they went?

Posted by John on Super User See other posts from Super User or by John
Published on 2012-11-27T23:20:12Z Indexed on 2012/11/28 5:08 UTC
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logging

A couple of days ago I noticed I had a folder on my computer with more than 15 files in it. All the files were the exact same size (215 MB). They all had different names (just a bunch of random characters like Abe327(/-38s etc.

I wasn't sure what they were so I decided to try to delete them. But then I noticed they disappeared from the D drive. Then the next day I noticed a new folder, with similar names and file sizes showed up on my C drive.

The timestamps on the first set of files was almost all from a few months ago. Like the timestamps were saying 3:52 AM, 403 AM, etc. all from the same date.

Then the set of files on the C drive that just appeared had yesterday's date on them. But similarly, all the files had timestamps within a 24 hour period. Like they had all just been created.

Now this morning, all of those files are gone, and I didn't delete them. There are now no files like this in either drive.

Any idea what these files were? Why were they so large, and why are they switching drives? Why did they disappear completely now, after the initial files were there for a few months.

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