Installation Stuck at 82% on external SSD, and full data loss on the SSD after cancelling installation!

Dear all,

I am trying to install Unreal engine 5.4.3 on an external SSD (4TB exFAT with 2.2TB free space remaining). Unfortunately, it was stuck at 82% for around 2 hrs, and I decided to cancel the installation. This caused epic games to delete my whole SSD partition and now I have lost all data?
The SSD is no longer visible in finder or disk utility. However, it is possible to see it in the Samsung portable ssd utility (but it says failed to locate a volume) and same situation with disk drill).
Help is much appreciated.

HI @ClemEagle, It really could be just an issue with installing such a large program onto an external device. When i first started out with UE and other 3D modelling software, i would put my projects on an external HDD or SSD and often would encounter issues with running the engines. I would highly suggest to not install onto an external device, there are just too many variable and issues that could occur when doing so.

what is the model of the SSD?

it is really strange that adding some files on the SSD breaks it. unreal will not use some magic arcane way of installing is using the operating system standard interface of writing data on disk. so if it fails when data is moved on the SSD that is like basic operation it should do

maybe the SSD may be faulty or fake