Folder suddenly missing

P

Phrom

New Member
I have a folder I keep all my important information in and suddenly the folder is gone. It does not show up in the documents folder anymore. It was a hidden folder. I don't know where it went, everything else is fine and where it should be.

I installed 'everything' and I searched it up and I get an error message when I click on the folder in explorer history in the task bar or when I click on it in 'everything'

Windows cannot find 'C:\user\script\documents\doc

I tried recuva and I didn't get but maybe a couple files of the many I had in the folder... What happened? can I get my files back?
 

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I would suspect that your hard drive is starting to fail on you. I would run a drive diagnostic on it. What brand is it?
 
I could be wrong, but this sounds like the work of chkdsk to me. Look and see if it created a Found.000 folder in the root. If so, it's likely your data is in there and has been all renamed to .chk files. Sometimes this can take forever to sort through if it's a lot of data. Unfortunately data recovery software usually can't help much in such cases.
 
beers said:
Also, if you don't see this then I would also manually force a chkdsk C: /r
Click to expand...

Absolutely NOT!!! Chkdsk is the very last thing you should ever do in a data loss situation. It's only function is to repair the file system to a "functioning" state, with absolutely no regard for data. I've seen dozens of cases where chkdsk made data recovery impossible. Do not run it!!!
 
JaredDM said:
Absolutely NOT!!! Chkdsk is the very last thing you should ever do in a data loss situation. It's only function is to repair the file system to a "functioning" state, with absolutely no regard for data. I've seen dozens of cases where chkdsk made data recovery impossible. Do not run it!!!
Click to expand...
Debatable. If it's file system corruption or a missing file descriptor then guess what, that's your tool.

You didn't provide the OP any recovery information other than "NO!", so please outline additional steps of what you believe to be the issue and resolution.
 
Running chkdsk will err on the side of simply removing entire entries from the file tables, effectively making it impossible later to properly put back together the file name and folder structure. It might just be a useless windows update folder, or it could be your entire users folder, and bam! it's gone now. Seen it too many times here at the data recovery lab. It's never, ever, ever the tool to use in a data loss situation.

1. Get a full sector by sector clone of the drive to keep as a backup using ddrescue and a linux live CD/DVD/USB (or better yet just work from the copy). Then if you want to run chkdsk, knock yourself out.
2. Go back and read my first response where I mentioned to the OP to check for that Found.000 folder. Whether or not it exists will determine what step should be taken next.

Here's a blog post from another data recovery company where he quotes M$'s own statements regarding the risk of using chkdsk: https://www.recoveryforce.com/is-it-safe-to-run-chkdsk/
 
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Phrom said:
I tried recuva and I didn't get but maybe a couple files of the many I had in the folder... What happened? can I get my files back?
Click to expand...
Did the software recognise that the folder was deleted? It could just be the file table entry is gone for the files it couldn't see, but then you're scanning the entire disk to see if anything looks like a file. I'm not sure you'll get that functionality from free versions though.
 
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