CHKDSK deleted files on 2nd hard drive

[the flurv]

It would appear as though CHKDSK deleted 400-500GB's on second hard drive in my computer and I am curious how to prevent this from happening again, how to recover them, and if the drive itself is still ok to use. Apologies for the length, trying to be thorough.

My computer has 3 HD's, HD 1 is C: drive and runs Win 10 and all the programs including Adobe Lightroom, HD 2 is only photographs plus my Adobe Lightroom catalog, HD 3 is an old drive I rarely use with Win7 OS on it.

I was running Lighroom and asked it to do a big task and shortly later the computer shut down. Once restarted it ran automatically ran CHKDSK when I wasn't looking and it started 'Deleting orphan file segments', 'Deleting index entry files', etc for quite a while. I thought it was running CHKDSK on HD 1/WIN 10 but once the computer restarted Win7 opened and my Win 10 drive was nowhere to be found.

I replaced the HD 1 SATA cable and moved it to a new SATA port, my Win10 drive started working again and I thought all was fine, problem solved. It turns out CHKDSK was running on HD 2 and it deleted a couple years worth of photographs and corrupted my Lightroom catalog. The vast majority of which I do have backed up.

Why would CHKDSK automatically run on startup for this hard drive and delete my files?
I ran Recuva on it and it found some of the files though it seems to be unable to restore them. Is there a better way recover files lost to CHKDSK?

Is this hard drive safe to continue? Is there any thing I should do before dumping my backup folders back onto this drive?

And how can I make CHKDSK never run again unless I ask it to?

Thank you

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there the flurv,

Chkdsk could result in data loss. Usually, this happens when the drive is failing. This is why, you need to check its SMART status out, after you try to recover the data: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility
Actually, it would be nice to test all your drives. Some screenshots would be of help.

As for the data recovery, you don't really have many options. You just need to use some other data recovery tools. Also, it would be nice to save all the recovered data to another HDD in order not to overwrite any of the data on that drive.

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[the flurv]

Hey D_Know_WD, thank you for the response.

I went ahead and downloaded the HD Tune Pro demo and ran some tests on the hard drive in question. The health appears to be good unless I am missing something and the error check found no errors as well. I have Recuva running a Deep scan right now

I also ran the folder usage utility and discovered a hidden Found.000 folder which seems to contain the deleted files all listed in .chk folders. Is there anything I can do with this?

And here is an alternative S.M.A.R.T. check using R-Studio as well as health check on the other two drives.

Any insight is appreciated.

 

[Colif]

Is this a fresh install of win 10? Was drive D in the PC when you installed Win 10? Its possible win 10 put the index or other files on Drive d and it was deleting system files to clean up space. I know I have an orphan 92 gb folder on my D drive that holds system restore info and I know I didn't ever give win permission to use that space

 

[the flurv]

Is this a fresh install of win 10? Was drive D in the PC when you installed Win 10? Its possible win 10 put the index or other files on Drive d and it was deleting system files to clean up space. I know I have an orphan 92 gb folder on my D drive that holds system restore info and I know I didn't ever give win permission to use that space

Hey Colif. Win 10 has been running since October and it is on the WD 2TB drive. The D drive is a 15GB recovery partition on the WIn7 drive (Samsung HD) installed by the computer manufacturer (Dell). I did a clean install of Win 10 to the then new WD 2TB drive, not an upgrade from Win 7, and I think I unplugged the other drives just so there wouldn't be any conflicts but don't remember specifically.

 

[Colif]

It seems win 10 had issues and your pc probably swapped to legacy boot method as it couldn't see Win 10. That would explain why Win 7 32 bit couldn't see Win 10, as Win 10 uses Uefi boot method and Legacy cannot boot up a Win 10 disc in its format

Win 7 uses MBR, Win 8 & 10 use GPT.
http://www.howtogeek.com/193669/whats-the-difference-between-gpt-and-mbr-when-partitioning-a-drive/

I don't think you can stop check disc from running, though if you replace drive c with another SSD it will never run again, unless you choose to run it... SSD use trim instead and you will never see it run

 

[the flurv]

Good to know about SSD.

I've seen CHKDSK run plenty of times on C: drive on startup over the years but I've never seen it run on K: drive (WD 4TB) which has no OS installed on it and is only a storage drive.

After this debacle it kept starting up into Win 7 so I switch the boot order back to Win 10 before Win 7 and disabled booting from the K: drive HD in hopes that this might prevent a future CHKDSK running on it.

 

[Colif]

I must have been lucky, I can't remember CHKDSK running at all on my HDD on win 7, and never since i got this pc though its got ssd. I have run it a few times on my storage drive when i was trying to delete my orphan 92gb file. I just gave up on that as the partition still has 700gb free so its not worth worrying about, another partition is virtually empty and has 900gb free, 92gb isn't worth my time. will fix it one day.

Win 10 probably has no files on the win 7 drive so it probably ignores it.

There is a system you can set up that uses the ssd as a cache for a HDD, but that cannot happen accidentally as it requires specific software, and SSD needs to be empty for it to work.

 

[the flurv]

Is there any way to access the found.000 folder that is on the root of my K: drive?
I've only been able to see it on HD Tune Pro's file scan and I'm unable to locate it in windows explorer. I made sure 'show hidden files & folders' was check marked in folder options.

 

[Colif]

Click on "Start" --> In search bar, type cmd. Right-click on the command prompt
that appears in the search and select "Run as administrator".
"Command Prompt" will be opened.
Here I assume your external hard disk drive letter as G:
Enter this command.
attrib -h -r -s /s /d g:\*.*
You can copy the above command --> Right-click in the Command Prompt and paste it.
Note : Replace the letter g with your external hard disk drive letter.
Now check for your files in external hard disk.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/how-to-access-a-found000-folder-that-is-locked/9b3ae883-b868-4944-be3f-92d7cd30be19?page=2

link also explains how to see it.