Lost+found file in place of all recently populated drive

Well, everything was working fine and I moved across a few bigger programs from A to B, and checked and they all launched perfectly.
I load up my pc later on, and launching anything that I moved across comes with the prompt to install said program.

I just assume its not mounted, so I make sure it is. I check the space used on it, and sure enough its being occupied by what i put on it. But when I cd into where i mounted it, its just a lost+found file.

I can still make directories on the disk and all that.

Does anyone know what happened and how i could fix this?

lost+found usually isn’t a file but a directory, and is commonly populated when the system has encountered and repaired a very bad filesystem error. The directory will then contain the recovered files.

Also, please note that GNU/Linux is a UNIX-style system and that you cannot simply move programs around in the filesystem layer like in Microsoft Windows. Please look at the information at the link below. :arrow_down:

Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

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Thank you for your answer.
I didnt move them around, I used the built-in tool on the native linux client of steam to correctly change some install paths, and as I said, it was working. And yes, lost+found is a directory but its very empty- just . .. are there.
There is also the problem that I unzipped a totally unrelated file onto this drive also, 100% separate from anything else, and that too has gone.

Do you have any further ideas as to what it could be? I dont mind wiping the disk and making a new steam library and installing straight to it and also re-download and move across some larger video files and large programs, but I wouldnt it to happen again.

Okay, I have played myself here… I found the missing files and , well, they are intact. But im even more confused.

Should I make a separate post or is this one a little too dead?

Just continue on this thread here. If it needs splitting off, then we can always do that later. :wink:

Okay doke. As ever, any insight you can bring to me on this will be greatly appreciated.

I cant explain what is happening cos I dont understand it, but here is what it looks like to me:
in /mnt/media I have some full folders such as steam and unreal and videos. they are all fine.
I had downloaded these all to another drive, and that drive was mounted to /mnt/media as I done that. But when I mount said drive, these files dissapear and in place is that lost+found one.

But, I am sure I downloaded them to that other drive, for a good 10% was freed when i moved them. And my otherdrive was empty, and now is populated.

what is annoying is that when i first did it, there were no issues; i would be able to open any video or game from their .desktop files, though the games launcher, or though the terminal no issues. Now, I MUST do sh /path/to/game/.sh to open it.
When this game opens and runs (which is does) steam actually comes up with a popup for installing the game. And when the game runs, its disconnected from steam.