I have an external hard drive with some backup files in it. Today I moved a folder with some Flac files and one jpg from the external HD to my iMac HD. When I tried and open the Flac files on the Mac, VLC showed them as "zero seconds", whereas Preview didn't open the jpg. Both software returned no error message.
I tried opening a bunch of files currently on the external HD (text, pdf, mp3,...) with different software. Same results. Names, extensions, and sizes are correct for all of them, but it seems like they are missing "something" for them to be recognized for what they are (metadata, maybe?)
I tried using SOS (disk utility), it found some minor problems, repair them, but the end result is the same. I even tried a Windows PC with a third party software: the same story, the files just won't open regardless of the software I use.
I finally tried with a data recovery software, but it only found deleted files, I couldn't "recover" files that weren't deleted.
I could probably try and create an image of the disk, but it's 2TB and I don't have enough space, and anyway, will it work?
Does anybody have an idea of what is going on?