Device Removal Error Notification

Question

I accidentally stepped on the USB cable of my external hard drive and my computer showed a device removal error notification and that data might have been lost. I know properly ejecting the hard drive clears out the cache, but how can you tell what data was lost. Is it obvious like an entire folder/file would be missing, or would just pieces of data from a file be missing?
Also, it said data MIGHT have been lost or damaged. Is it possible that nothing happened at all?

Answer 1

It could potentially damage multiple files, but I would consider it unlikely. More likely it would damage the disk directory, affecting the entire drive, rather than damage more than the file being written. Again, though, I won't say it's impossible.
I've also tried to run Disk Utility on it to verify the disk, but it says the disk could not be unmounted
Got any software accessing the drive, such as iTunes, iPhoto, or anything else that might have a file open on the drive?
As to your query, what you're seeing seems normal. It's telling you how many files it sees (and "files" do not necessarily equal "documents"; it's what a computer considers to be a file, which can include all sorts of invisible items). As to what "clusters" are, there's a good explanation here:
http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/clusters.htm
Regards.
Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer