Ubuntu 9.10 + NTFS-Config and Files missing from NTFS partition

[cedeon]

I'd just like to say that i have just experienced the exact same problem. I have a dual boxed (Win XP/ Ubuntu) laptop with a large NTFS partition that held my VirtualBox .vdi files. Everything was fine until i booted into Windows and came back to ubuntu to find my .vdi files were missing. I've tried several undelete utilities but its like they were never there! Very strange.
I'm looking for fixes at the moment and will update this thread if i find out more. If it helps, i also had 2 large (>20GB) truecrypt files in the same folder and luckily they have remained. They were created from within Windows though, so maybe theres an issue with linux ntfs with large files like you suggested? or some crazy conspiracy with windows deleting large linux created ntfs files upon booting into windows?

[conualfy]

Something similar happened to me, but not with image files, but avi files. They were saved from Ubuntu in the ntfs partition (win 7 x64). I say it after booting the win 7, a few minutes before (in Ubuntu 11.4) the files were there.

[hoxbug]

Sorry to bump an old thread but this seems to happen to me as well.
I think this is just a NTFS partition problem since I have had this kind of thing happen to me in just windows without any kind of linux installed on it. I have been using linux now for long time and all my partitions on my pc are ext3 and never had files disappear but my external hard drives are in NTFS so as to be able to share stuff with other people.

I am only booting linux on my pc
So i go into my NTFS external hard drive to look for a movie that I put there a long time ago. to my horror there is nothing in the movies folder. where there show be over 150 gb. NOW WTF

I try just for kind of a test to see if i copy something in the folder and unmount the drive then remount if the files would still be there. Well I did not even need to unmount because once i close the window with the file open and go back into it, it just disappears. I am waiting to save up enough money and get a external hard drive that i can partition into ext3 or 4 and then copy all that is left on this NTFS partition.

Oh one last thing as others say the space still shows up as being used up. Because I have seen this problem happening in both windows and linux i suspect it might just be a NTFS partition problem. Hopefully i wont lose much more.

[conualfy]

In my case I think there was an old bug with the NTFS driver, but since then I upgraded the Ubuntu (I now use 11.10, Oneiric Ocelot) and I never saw that bug again.

I also met another partition limitation I forgot about: old windows FAT partitions cannot accept large files; I think that FAT32 can only work with files smaller than 4GB. Try not to forget this when you format your external hard disks and want to use them for DVD, BluRay or other large files.