TC ruined hours of work by damaging videofiles when moving

[Canadian]

Please help! This happened many times already but not as severe as today.
I worked for hours on video editing, I created several tens of files. Each of them worked just fine - I tested because it was critical to know If the start/end points of the videocuts were correctly chosen.
At the end I created a new folder and moved everything there (same HDD, same partititon) by TC
As a result the majority of files is damaged - regardless of the player they show black screen, no audio, only the progress indicator moves. Neither of my video editing software can show any video or sound in those files. I sent one of them to a friend via skype - same thing - only the progress indicator moves but no video and no audio.

I want to cry!!!!

And no - I don't have a virus, I have scheduled virus scans every night. I checked the hdd with chkdsk - no problems.

Another strange behavior I noticed is that sometimes when copying/moving jpg files I end up with a lot of TMP files with the same name as the JPG file. Typically they are having a different size (according to TC) and can open by image viewers without a problem. I just delete them. Annoying but not as much as the damaging of video files.
My current version is 9.0a. I cannot answer if I noticed this defect with another version. But I noticed this defect for the first time many months ago.
The copy method was set to "preferred".
The files today were not big - between 2 and 20 Megabytes each.

Please help!
I am a long time TC fan and I own a paid license.

[sqa_wizard]

I created a new folder and moved everything there (same HDD, same partititon)

In this case the data is not touched in any way, regardless of the tool which moved the file.
Only an entry at the FAT table (kind of directory record) is adapted to the new location.

There must be an other reason beside of moving.

Anything special with the folder name?
May the path length is greater than 255 character?

[Canadian]

Absolutely noting strange in the name of the new folder - has regular latin letters, a number and a dash "-". Definitely much shorter than 255 chars.
It is a subfolder of the original folder.
The original folder currently contains 26 folders and 2233 files.
Could that big number of files be an explanation?

[sqa_wizard]

I am working with folders containing more than 10000 files without any problem.

[Hacker]

Perhaps the files were still open?

Roman

[Canadian]

you cannot move open files

[Dalai]

you cannot move open files

True, but when files can't be moved TC automatically copies them and tries to delete the source afterwards. BTW: This is one of the more annoying things in TC, especially when you try to move large files. No, I don't want to copy large files within the same partition just because they're open in some other program, because that's just stupid! But that's a rant/suggestion for another topic; sorry for OT.

BTT: I highly doubt that TC damaged any files. Were the files still open in any other software when you moved them? If not, it's like sqa_wizard said: the files themselves won't be touched in any way. If the files were still open in some software - this may also be just the anti-virus software - then TC copied them and deleted the source afterwards (if possible, of course).

Regards
Dalai

[Canadian]

I don't think they were opened. The video editing software - Avidemux in this case does not keep the output files open. Neither should VLC player - whenever you open another file by double-clicking in TC the VLC opens the new file and forgets about the previous. Moreover VLC opens files for reading.

The move was instant, without any error messages (as it should be)

[Gral]

2 Canadian
So, how big are broken/incomplete files? - this is very important!
Same as source (good) files or smaller?

[Canadian]

I think they are the same, but I cannot be 100% sure, because I moved all at once, so I don't have what to compare to.

[ghisler(Author)]

Total Commander does not touch the content of a file when you rename or move it within the same drive.

What can happen is that the file access permissions get changed when the source and target folder have different permissions. Can you look at the binary content with F3?

[Canadian]

The binary content looks fine - no emtpy areas, no repeating bytes. Also VLC can show the bitrate of the audio and video stream and the frame rate, regardless that no video and audio is played.

[hlloyge]

Please copy some of these files to other computer and try to play them there. Also, check HDDs for bad sectors with tools made by manufacturers.

[petermad]

2Canadian
Could you try and copy one of the files back to the original directory (if still present), and then try and play it from there...?

[Canadian]

2Canadian
Could you try and copy one of the files back to the original directory (if still present), and then try and play it from there...?

no luck

@hlloyge:

I tried - cannot play on another computer.

Checked with Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows - all is good with the drive.