files gone from external hdd

[MK-2]

I only posted this in here as it relates to a personal hdd nothing work related.

I have a 1tb external usb drive which i had two folders on, work and home. home had loads of holiday photos, letters etc. work had backups of things i wanted, layouts, ad policies, etc.

 

up until yesterday all was fine, but i noticed yesterday the home folder had gone. i've run a couple of free file recovery progs which appear to recover a few docs, but not all. i didn't delete the home folder, so assume it has been lost by me unplugging it unsafely

 

are there any progs that could successfully scan and recover these? the programs ive tried show some docs saying "overwritten by i:\home\xxxxxx" but i:\home doesn't exist. i haven't written or deleted anything from it since in the hope that it wont overwrite anything on there.

 

any ideas?

cheers

[Flakes]

hmm, i know its a silly question to ask have you checked to make sure that it just hasnt moved? Ctrl+f and searched for a folder called "home"?

 

used to have a good program, ill see if i can dig it up for you.

[MK-2]

hmm, i know its a silly question to ask have you checked to make sure that it just hasnt moved? Ctrl+f and searched for a folder called "home"?

 

used to have a good program, ill see if i can dig it up for you.

 

i tried to rule out the silly ones, but i haven't really used the drive much, and haven't been in the home folder. apart from that the drive went from about 600gb free to 800gb free so im assuming the drive believes it was deleted

[Achandler]

Winhex but it isnt free (unless you are dodgy)

[MK-2]

Winhex but it isnt free (unless you are dodgy)

 

isn't it? ive just googled it and the first link i got for winhex is a free download and its opened without asking for payment?

[Achandler]

Well there is a "free" version but I believe there is a limit to the size or number of files it will recover for you, (can't be exactly sure though).

 

However I can safely say that is a is an excellent piece of software, that I have used to recover files of a hard drives that make ticking sounds and all sorts. I used it only yesterday to recover a file from a flash drive.

[Gibbo]

Have you turned on hidden and system folders to make sure that you don't have that virus which hides and moves your files?

[MK-2]

ah yes i see what you mean, no files larger than 200kb can be recovered. looks like i might be buying that then!

[Achandler]

It is awesome (though can be complicated), I first used it a few years ago (through a dodgy license), however having used it and realised how much time and effort it was saved me I bought it, I did a 'full trial' then bought it! Definitely an excellent piece of software though.

[36Degrees]

I've used Recover My Files recently which again isn't free but I was impressed by. I managed to recover a load of files from a hard drive after it had been formatted by PC World.

[Achandler]

Im suprised you didnt get someone elses hard drive and files if PC World had touched the machine (I worked fixing laptops for them, so I have seen things).

[MK-2]

Winhex so far is the only one that showed me the "Home" directory and all files inside. the others ive tried just showed me files similar to the old undelete command. winhex seems to be recovering all so just want to say thanks to everyone for advice, and @Achandler for mentioning winhex

[36Degrees]

Im suprised you didnt get someone elses hard drive and files if PC World had touched the machine (I worked fixing laptops for them, so I have seen things).

 

Me neither! Friend's daughter had a problem with her laptop the day she was due to fly to the States for a couple of months so took it there. It went from "we'll have to wipe the hard drive but it will be fixed in 2 hours", then 3 hours later "we're just fixing it now" to "it will take 10 weeks to fix". I fixed it in 3 days which included recovering her photos from the formatted HDD and waiting 2 days for a new hard drive to be delivered...

[JJonas]

Have a look at Testdisk or Recuva both are free. I find Recuva easier to use but Testdisk will recover files from lost partitions. As always recover the files it finds to a different drive.

[MK-2]

Have a look at Testdisk or Recuva both are free. I find Recuva easier to use but Testdisk will recover files from lost partitions. As always recover the files it finds to a different drive.

 

no need now as winhex is recovering, but one of the ones i initially tried was recuva. without a deep scan it found very little, with a deep scan it froze on 30% and refused to move (after a day)

[chazzy2501]

I don't suppose you've checked the harddrives health? Theres a small chance that it's failing, being through USB the interface doesn't always pass on SMART info. I'd suggest a full chkdsk with surface scan just to make sure all is well.

 

If it were my drive I'd remove it from the enclosure and run spinrite on it.

[Achandler]

If a laptop that is under PC World Warranty (that oen you pay for) isn't fixed within 8 weeks you use to be able to demand a new one as a replacement instead. it had to be a new one to, not a refurb. Atleast that was the rule when I worked fixing them.

 

Now noone would ever wait 8 weeks though unless they had some super rare laptop and had used it as a plate for a Vindaloo Curry and then "dropped" it underneath a tank. And even then you would probabaly get a refurb in time, the funny thing about the "refurbs" was, is that they had to have the same serial number on the bottom!

[Rawns]

Something strange, but the system attributes have not changed for the folder have they? Only mention it as we have seen this happen a few times with the SIMSAREA as well as other files in school of their own accord.

 

Open a command prompt and go to the USB drive root (F: for example) and type "ATTRIB HOME"

 

If it returns "SHR HOME" it means it's a system file, hidden, and read only. You can remove the attributes by typing "ATTRIB -S -H -R HOME" and it should be back and visible in explorer.

 

On a separate note, any errors in the system area in event viewer? My External USB HDD started playing silly beggers recently and it had loads of bad sectors according to event viewer.

Edited June 14, 2011 by Rawns

[MK-2]

nope its attribs according to winhex were fine, and in dos didnt exist. but as i said earlier, the drive showed up a lot less space than it used to, indicating that windows thought it had been deleted.

 

either way i've had the drive about 4 years now and think ill be looking at a better one now as this one does get very hot anyway when in use