Hi Guys
Not sure if this is in the right place but its a pretty complex problem.
So there's a bit of background to this. I have been asked to organise a lot of files from different sources on to an external hard drive (formatted to accept Windows 10). The files were given to me on a 500gb hard drive with a lot space still available. I was then given a second hard drive (formatted to accept Mac files) again with a lot of space still available. I backed up both of these hard drives onto each other. So I had about 250gb of data on both hard drives. In order to merge these files properly and editable into one external hard drive, I formatted a third 1tb hard drive to ExFat. Copied all the files onto the hard drive from ONE of the back ups. Started organising the files into folders. Moving the files and not copying. Deleting duplicated files and empty folders. Went to add some more files downloaded from Google Drive to the hard drive, totally expecting there to be plenty of space. At least 500gb should have been available. However there is 931gb of spaced used and only 231mb available. How has this happened? I checked to see if there were any hidden files and there was a recycle bin folder thats full. But as I haven't even gone though an 8th of the hard drive I really don't think there should be 400gb of data in there. I'm wary of deleting those files just in case it corrupts the hard drive. Also two people in the office have full trash bins from my deleting of duplicated files and I don't understand how that has happened as we aren't networked. Plus I'm using a Windows 10 machine and they are using Macs. I'm probably missing something very obvious but I'm really flummoxed.
Further to this, it seems not all the files migrated to the ExFat hard drive. So now have to move over the back up files again. But obviously can't do this until there's room on the hard drive. I've now tried doing a disk clean up, and checking the folder sizes against the back up hard drive. The folders are 27.3gb, 100gb, and 5.33gb on the back up they add up to 280gb . There are now no hidden files on the hard drive yet the capacity is still being shown as 900gb used. Something is lurking on this hard drive but I really can't figure out what. The files were put on the hard drive using a mac and I understand that could cause issues. The 2 back up hard drives are both formatted to Mac.
I thought I had this challenge all figured out. Simple process of formatting a hard drive to ExFat, moving files from two hard drives into it and then organising the files within the hard drive, then downloading the google drive documents to the new filing system. I'm now having issues downloading from google drive.
What should have taken 2 weeks maximum has taken 2 months! Any advice to fix any of these issues would be very much appreciated. Or maybe an alternate way of achieving the result I need.
