External Hardrive files erased after Time Machine backup

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Hi all!
Long time lurker, first time having this much of a melt down that I needed to post. I bought a 1TB WD external drive that I only ever used on Mac Pros in a film editing lab and my late 2008 MBP. My MBP filled up and started running annoyingly slow this past semester so I moved the majority of my computer's data over the the external drive by dragging the files I didn't need on my MBP all the time to free up some space, and it worked like a charm.
Everything was fine and dandy until my MBP started rebelling against me and demanded 3 trips to the Apple salon and spa.
Trip 1: Manually backed it up by just dragging everything over to the external drive. No problems there
Trip 2: Backed up using Time Machine. Again no problems, all files were intact on the external drive right next to the Time Machine folder.
Trip 3: Time Machine back up. Again, no problems.
I plug in the external drive, and the only thing there is the Time Machine back up folder, and the only file there is the most recent back up!
I always eject(ed) the drive properly and double checked that everything was as it should be before removing.
What the **** happened and is there ANYTHING I can do to restore over 8 years of data? Everyone always says to make sure you backup/store files in a safe place, and that's what I thought I had did!
Wisdom, advice, or directions to the nearest high cliff are greatly appreciated.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Currently 13" Late 2010 MBA, 4GB/128GB; Early 2011 13" MBP, dual core i7 2.7ghz, 4gb ram, 500gb hd
I'd download GrandPerspective, a freeware utility, and scan your external. There's a chance the files are still there, but hiding or invisible. If the files were deleted, I'd try Data Rescue - it's a free trial to show how much data is recoverable, and then if you want to recover it, it's $99.

Not to rub salt into a wound, but you've discovered a gotcha on backups - if your data is only in one location, you don't have a backup. Backups are done to eliminate a single point of failure. If all your data was moved to the external and then removed from your internal drive, your external drive is a single point of failure.
 

RavingMac

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Your Mac's Specs
16Gb Mac Mini 2018, 15" MacBook Pro 2012 1 TB SSD
Possibly can recover some of the files from your internal HD also, but you need to quit using it ASAP. Depending on how long it has been and how much usage and overwriting of files there has been you may be able to recover a good percentage.
 

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