Help! All data lost in a folder

Irish Stones

I have a folder on an external HDD, a WD Passport, and this folder had several files in it, some of them were extremely important.
I'm in progress for a massive backup of this external drive and I have just found out that the folder that should have had several files is empty!
I am positive that a few weeks ago the files were in it, and I am positive that I haven't touched them in the past two months.
So I wonder what could have happened. I am surprised that all the files have disappeared but not the folder itself.
What could I do to recover the content of the folder?
I have tried with programs like Recuva and Wise Data Recovery but they have found no deleted data.
Is there anything else that I can do?
Please, tell me that I have some hope

Baked.noodle

Have you plugged the drive in and looked in the recycle bin on your desktop?

Irish Stones

Yes, the recycle bin has something in it, but none of those data are what I'm looking for :(:(

Baked.noodle

Run chkdsk
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/termsc/p/chkdsk.htm

chkdsk c: /r

In this example, the chkdsk command is used to perform an extensive check of the drive to correct any errors and to locate any recover information from bad sectors.

Just put the drive letter for your external drive in instead of c:

Irish Stones

Baked.noodle wrote: »

Run chkdsk
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/termsc/p/chkdsk.htm


Just put the drive letter for your external drive in instead of c:

It says that the disk is used by another process... what could it be?

Baked.noodle

Have a look here: http://ask-leo.com/what_does_chkdsk_cannot_run_because_the_volume_is_in_use_by_another_process_mean.html

Chkdsk on C:

The "magic answer", so to speak, is actually part of the very error message we see:
Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be
checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)

Answer the question with a "Y" for yes, followed by Enter, and chkdsk will run the next time you reboot Windows, before Windows itself begins to run. That's the only time that chkdsk can have the exclusive access to the system disk that it needs.
This volume will be checked the next time the system restarts.

gugleguy

Is it a Western Digital Drive by any chance? If so, head straight to the Western Digital website. There should be a downloadable data recovery application there forget the name of it. Used it 10 years ago. Just thought I'd throw the suggestion out.

Irish Stones

OK, thank you, I'll do that as soon as I finish the backup that I'm doing now, it will take some time.
I'll let you know

Irish Stones

gugleguy wrote: »

Is it a Western Digital Drive by any chance? If so, head straight to the Western Digital website. There should be a downloadable data recovery application there forget the name of it. Used it 10 years ago. Just thought I'd throw the suggestion out.

Yes, it's a WD Passport, 1 TB.
I'll check it out, thanks a lot!

EDIT: I cannot find any application in that website, probably it's no more available...
On Monday I will try to contact a data recovery centre, any idea of the cost of a data recovery?

bonzodog2

Its worth checking the Volume Shadow Copies feature. Choose Properties of the folder, click the Previous Versions tab

Irish Stones

bonzodog2 wrote: »

Its worth checking the Volume Shadow Copies feature. Choose Properties of the folder, click the Previous Versions tab

I chose properties of the folder, but there's no tab with that name.
Only three tabs, General, Share, Customize (or something like that in English, my tabs have Italian names).

What is strange is that when I open any other folder the window opens up quickly and the Properties as well are shown promptly. When I open the "damaged" folder or click for its properties, it takes up to 5 seconds to show a blank window or the properties. It has an unusual behaviour.

Mr. G

This is going to sound stupid by check other folders (search your PC and the drive) for the drive as you may have moved it to another folder without noticing.

Irish Stones

Mr. G wrote: »

This is going to sound stupid by check other folders (search your PC and the drive) for the drive as you may have moved it to another folder without noticing.

I did it
I searched the whole drive and nothing was found.
I never do cut-and-paste of a file, so it's unlikely that I have lost them during a wrong action.

EDIT: I'm running chkdsk /f for that drive.
So far it fixed the indexes for two files, it recovered about 25 lost files. Some of them look like the one I was looking for. It says it can't recover the files because there's no enough space on the disk (I have about 40 GB available, can't understand how it's not enough).
Now it's verifying the file data, but it's dead slow, with this trend I think it will take another 16 hours to finish!!!

NEW EDIT: Well, I don't think I could be able to update you until tomorrow. It will be about 1 am of tomorrow when the verify is over.
I'm stuck!!!

Irish Stones

The system finished its verify, it took only 8 hours... :mad:
The verify was partly unsuccessful, about 30 files were with damaged clusters and not recoverable, but none of them files were those I'm looking for.
Clearly the drive has some big troubles and I'm finishing the backup in order to put all my files in a safer vault.
Then I'll do a second backup of the files from the new drive.
Any idea on how to recover the damaged files?

Irish Steve

Irish Stones wrote: »

The system finished its verify, it took only 8 hours... :mad:
The verify was partly unsuccessful, about 30 files were with damaged clusters and not recoverable, but none of them files were those I'm looking for.
Clearly the drive has some big troubles and I'm finishing the backup in order to put all my files in a safer vault.
Then I'll do a second backup of the files from the new drive.
Any idea on how to recover the damaged files?

I would not be optimistic of your chances, as the disc has been written to by other applications since the problem became evident. That could mean that sectors that were part of damaged files have now been over written by other files. It is possible that a specialist data recovery company may be able to help, but that's an expensive and time consuming process, and your decision on using a service of that nature will be determined by the value of the data that's been lost or corrupted.

One single external drive is NOT a secure backup system, there are way too many ways that problems can happen, both from a hardware aspect and from the operating system side of things, (even a power spike can cause huge problems) and that's ignoring the potential for "finger trouble", so if the data is valuable, if you don't have some form of cloud storage service, you need to have at least 2 external drives, which are used alternately, and NEVER under any circumstances at the same time, and if there is ANY form of error or issue, the drive that has that issue must NOT be written to by ANY application until the error or issue has been resolved.

Another critical issue that's often overlooked by users is that an external drive should NOT be moved for at least 10 seconds after power has been removed, as the disc can still be spinning, and moving it during run down (or run up for that matter) can do serious damage to the recording surface.

I wish you the best of luck with recovering your data.

Irish Stones

Irish Steve wrote: »

One single external drive is NOT a secure backup system, there are way too many ways that problems can happen

As I wrote, I'm finishing this back-up, then I'll run another backup starting from this new and working drive.
It'll take time, but I'll do it.

you need to have at least 2 external drives, which are used alternately, and NEVER under any circumstances at the same time, and if there is ANY form of error or issue, the drive that has that issue must NOT be written to by ANY application until the error or issue has been resolved.

Very good advice, thank you!

Another critical issue that's often overlooked by users is that an external drive should NOT be moved for at least 10 seconds after power has been removed, as the disc can still be spinning, and moving it during run down (or run up for that matter) can do serious damage to the recording surface.
I wish you the best of luck with recovering your data.

Well, I didn't know that!
My only precaution was not to move the drive during the normal use, but once it was disconnected I used to move and store it right away.
Thank you!

As for the files that the verify found as not recoverable, as a matter of fact they are working fine both on the old drive and on the new drive.
I only lost three photos so far, but the files in the folder that I was talking about, well, they have completely disappeared

spcw

go back to the previous versions offering. share the drive and map a drive letter to it then right click the mapped drive and look for previous versions

Irish Stones

spcw wrote: »

go back to the previous versions offering. share the drive and map a drive letter to it then right click the mapped drive and look for previous versions

I'm sorry, but I think I haven't understood
Can you be, please, clearer? I'm not an expert in this field... Thank you!

spcw

connect your drive to the laptop or whatever.


right click on the drive letter and chose share


when its shared right click on my computer and choose map network drive.


link a network drive to the share ie d: as [URL="file://\\mylaptop\sharedrive"]\\mylaptop\sharedrive[/URL]


then right click on the D drive you just created and goto properties and in there you may find previous versions tab. and old copies of your data.


just maybe.....

Irish Stones

spcw wrote: »

+
connect your drive to the laptop or whatever.
right click on the drive letter and chose share
when its shared right click on my computer and choose map network drive.
link a network drive to the share ie d: as [URL="file://\\mylaptop\sharedrive"]\\mylaptop\sharedrive[/URL]
then right click on the D drive you just created and goto properties and in there you may find previous versions tab. and old copies of your data.
just maybe.....

I did as instructed, all OK but no Previous Version Tab...
My OS is XP, I think that it doesn't support this utility.
I'll try tomorrow with the PC at work that has Win 7.

djerk

hdd sentinel is a good tool for general analysis of a hdd's health: http://www.hdsentinel.com/

the fact that the folder you mentioned takes some time to open spells bad sectors to me, but, its strange that the folder would be empty even if that was the case. could be something weird going on there. were the files encrypted, do you have full permissions to view the folder?

ps would recommend trying recovery with testdisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

list of boot/live cds here: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Livecd

be careful not to write ANY data on the external drive if you hope to have any chance of recovering your data.

ED E

The fact that youve used it since reduces your chances greatly, as said above.

I'd be reaching for Spinrite in this scenario.

riclad

I used recuva and undeletePlus program to recover 15gig worth of files yesterday .from a partition .not the primary partition,
Windows says this partition is invalid.
I formatted the partition,
quick format, and recuva found all the files , music,video, pdfs ,mp3s etc
ie i did not do a full ntfs format.

I think spinrite works in a specific way to clean up, reorganise files on a hard disk.
it may not be any use to you,
where you just need files from just one ` folder.
you can download, undelete plus, free, and do a scan of all folders.
I think spinrite reorganises files on the whole hard disk.

IF you want to use it to recover files ,you,ll need to buy a license for it.
Undeleteplus found all the files and folders on the partition,
before i formatted the partition.
Partition size is 35gig.
Some files i did not bother recovering.
RECUVA deep scan says 99.9 per cent of files in excellent condition, can be recovered .
scan took 2.5 hours approx to complete.Recuva did not detect any files , on the partition , before i did a quick format.
i,m not saying that you should format the external drive ,
i,m just explaining how i recovered my files .

Irish Stones

I am here to thank you all and to tell you that misteriously the data that looked like lost have come back.
Two nights ago, while I was struggling and fighting and sweating to finish the backup of this (maybe) faulty disk, I had the idea to look into the folder that I thought it was empty and I found the files I was looking for.
I can assume that the chkdsk or any other thing that I did could have taken them back for the otherworld.
As soon as I saw them I copied them to two other disks. Now they should be quite safe.
Any idea how did they come back?

dilallio

Do you have more than one user account on that pc?

Irish Stones

dilallio wrote: »

Do you have more than one user account on that pc?

Well, on the home PC (a netbook) I have two user account (Win 7 Starter), but the second account has never been used. It was set up by a friend of mine who is a software expert to use it as a remote connection in case I had trouble with that netbook. But he never accessed it.
On other PC's there's one user account only.