Alabama ? The Department of Veterans Affairs began notifying 1.8 million veterans and doctors Monday that their personal and business information could be on a portable hard drive that has been missing from an Alabama hospital for nearly three weeks.

The hard drive may have contained Social Security numbers and other personal information from about 535,000 individuals and billing information on 1.3 million doctors nationwide, the VA said. That’s more than 37 times more people than authorities initially believed were affected.

An employee at the VA medical center in Birmingham reported the external hard drive missing Jan. 22. The drive was used to back up information on the employee’s office computer. It may have contained data from research projects, the department said.

The VA first publicly revealed the equipment was missing 11 days after it was reported.