Where have all my files gone, I want them back

[shammesfah]

I have a 250 gig hard drive with lots of mp3's on it. Now most of my files are gone!
The folders are there but exploerer says there empty. I have checked the file veiw to see if I could view hidden files/folders and I can. I have looked from My Computer, Exploerer and through search, Can't find nuttin.

Now for the fun part in My computer when I click on the drive it says I still have the same amount of space used on it as when it was full!
I tried to de-frag and in the analize mode it say there are file fragments in the empty folders. It also says there is not (enough) space to de-frag which might be true if the drive was Full!.

Is this a windows problem, drive failure or am I just missing the big picture? I dont know dos but could I use it to find the missing files? and if so how?

 

[apj101]

might be worth a try to boot to dos and see if it can see them, but i doubt it?
You'll need to boot from a disk (put floppy disk in and then turn machine on)

You can download a boot disk here
http://www.bootdisk.com/

once is booted to dos you should be able to navigate to you suspect folder using the cd command
read here for a list of dos commands
http://www.computerhope.com/overview.htm

you one's you'll need are "cd" and "dir"