all my documents.....just gone

[cycleman77]

i am so f**k'n pissed right now. I have no idea what happened.

here is how my hard drive is set up.
partition:
1 - windows
2 - programs
3 - games
4 - music
5 - data
6 - images

all my data (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc) is on data. i re-installed windows and all my programs on tuesday (11/23).
everything was fine. i moved my "my documennts" folder from the default location to my data partition. i had never done this before. i just did it so i wouldnt have to sort thru a bunch of directories to save anything. i could just save it to 'default' which would be on my data drive. i then copied my doc folder into "my documents". so window's "my documents" now contains my "docs" folder. simple enough, right?

didnt do anything on thanksgiving.
today, i go back to work on some speadsheets and they are all gone. the entire "my documents" folder is empty. idk what happened. they were there. i know they were there. i used them on wednesday.
i did a complete search of my entire hard drive...came up empty. :-

i got some stuff backed up, but nothing recent.
i know im goin out on a limb here, but is there anyway to recover my data?
any software out there that can recover documents that were lost before it is installed?

2 weeks in the semester left....and all my sh*t is gone.....
can you say "heart attack"?

 

[igowerf]

I don't know what happened, but whatever you do, don't change anything on the drive yet (don't defrag!). Obviously, have you tried viewing hidden files?

Try checking the drive with a file recovery program like:
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html
or
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/pcinspector.html

Both of those are freeware, but you might have better luck with commercial software. You can find commercial software for file recovery on that website.

If that doesn't work either, try running a scandisk on your drive. My roommate's video files disappeared once and it turned out that he had errors on that hard drive. The scandisk fixed the errors and all of his files came back.

 

[mechBgon]

This brought to mind a new virus that deletes files with the following extensions... well, I'll just link to McAfee's description of it. There are a couple that do this, and the virus definitions to detect them came out on the 24th, so it's quite recent. Done an antivirus scan with the very latest defs yet?

...although you don't really sound like the type who'd be suckered by this virus.

 

[n0cmonkey]

I think there is a program called something like r-studio that _might_ be able to help recover the files. It's not free, so how much are the files worth to you?

 

[cycleman77]

igowerf,
thanks for the link. restoration found the folder and all the docs. unfortunately only about 50% of them are still readable files.
its better than nothing

 

[n0cmonkey]

Not to give you crap or anything, but this is why good backups are important. Most people that really know that learned the hard way.

 

[kamper]

Just out of curiosity: you didn't log in as a different user did you?

 

[cycleman77]

logging in as a different user would not have hidden my documents.
besides...i only have one user id on this machine (other than administrator).

i do make back-ups, but not all the time. the last time i backed up my stuff was back in the beginning of the year.
definately going to start doing it more often.

i guess this isnt turning out too bad. the stuff i was able to recover is the most important stuff. (resumes, logs, etc). the stuff i lost for good was spreadsheets (phone numbers, addresses, pc quotes, banking crap, etc) and old emails (mostly from old friends (girls :disgust: )).

in the end, its going to be a lot of work recreating my spreadsheets, but as far as the old emails and what not....its probably good they are gone.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: cycleman77
logging in as a different user would not have hidden my documents.

No but it would have sent you to a different location when you clicked on my documents. I didn't think that would be it but I just thought I'd make sure.

Edit: spelling fixed

 

[igowerf]

Did you try running the scandisk? That might help too.