Lost "My Documents"

[martalli]

I just bought a nice new hard drive enclosure. I started partitioning and formatting the usb hard drive...but now my "My Documents" folder is missing. I had considered linking one of the partitions to a folder in my My Documents folder, but in the end I just assigned it a drive letter.

This computer is a P4 2.6 GHz running Win XP (dual-botting with Mandrake 10.1). The Windows partition is an NTFS filesystem.

Is there a way to recover the folder? After all, isn't NTFS a journalized filesystem? Shouldn't I be able to recover the folder with knoppix or norton utilities, or something??? Help!

Thanks,
Bryan
(Currently I switched back to mdk to minimize activity on the windows partition).

 

[jalaram]

Where is it missing from? The StartFolder, Desktop and/or Explorer?

What is your system drive? If it's C:, can you go to C:\Documents and Settings\<login>\My Documents or c:\My Documents?

 

[martalli]

The "My Documents" folder is in c:\Documents and Settings\<login>\My Documents (or rather, it was). The c:\Documents and Settings\<login> folder is still there, with everything still in place. Firefox and thunderbird were working without any problems, although after realizing the problem I rebooted, thinking it was temporary glitch. After that didn't work, I decided to switch over to mandrake, and puzzle this out.

When I examine it from Mandrake, I can see the c:\ partition, with everything intact but the c:\Documents and Settings\<login>\My Documents folder...

Bryan

 

[birdpup]

Originally posted by: martalli
I just bought a nice new hard drive enclosure. I started partitioning and formatting the usb hard drive...but now my "My Documents" folder is missing...

By hard drive enclosure, do you mean an external hard drive with a new hard drive within this enclosure or did you remove your, operative, internal hard drive and place it within this enclosure? It is not clear how this enclosure relates to your system.

How does this new hard drive enclosure relate to your C: partition with your system files?

What happens when you select [Start, My Documents]?

What is the Target folder location when you select [Start, right-click My Documents, Properties]?

Select [Start, Run, regedit, OK]. What is the value for the "Personal" variable under the following key?
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

For the future, you can move all of a users files from "C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\*" just by defining the USERPROFILE user variable with the new directory.
right-click My Computer, select Advanced tab, select, Environment Variables, create USERPROFILE with new path in top box for "User variables for <username>". Type "set" on command line, after rebooting, to verifiy new setting.

Data can possibly be recovered by using one of these programs:
1) R-Studio
2) GetDataBack
3) Ontrack's Easy Recovery Pro
4) Quetek
5) File Scavenger
6) HDD Regenerator

I prefer GetDataBack.

 

[martalli]

The hard drive I put in the enclosure was new. I haven't changed my main system drive. The system is an SFF (Asus Pundit), and only has space for one internal hard drive. Ironically, I bought the new enclosure and HD in order to do backups! I will look at these utilities and try to recover these files. Unfortunately, this was my work computer without a backup in the last few months. =(

Bryan

 

[birdpup]

Originally posted by: birdpup
What happens when you select [Start, My Documents]?

What is the Target folder location when you select [Start, right-click My Documents, Properties]?

Select [Start, Run, regedit, OK]. What is the value for the "Personal" variable under the following key?
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Did you check these, what are these values?