Where are the files?...

[kambell soup]

Hi All,

I have a question about some files that suddenly disappeared from my laptop. I have been creating some short animated videos for some time, and just let them build up in the destination folder used by the animating program. There must have been around 100 or so files of all different sizes.

After finishing up work a few days ago, I shut down the computer as usual. The next morning, I opened the folder to find they were all gone. I never moved them, or deleted them. There has been no notification of any kind of system issue. I have looked over the event viewer, and even though I don't really know what I should be looking for, all the entries seem to follow the same type of actions with nothing to suggest there was some kind of system failure or that I 'accidentally' deleted all the files.

My laptop has an SSD. It is around a year old.

When I run a file recover program, it shows they are all there (somewhere?) but of course, to actually recover the files, I would need to purchase the full program (surprise me...)

Is there any way I can get these files back without using a recovery program? What could have caused the files to vanish in the first place? This happened a day after the crowd strike debacle, could it have something to do with that?

Thank you for any help or suggestions,

Kambell

 

[CountMike]

Hi All,

I have a question about some files that suddenly disappeared from my laptop. I have been creating some short animated videos for some time, and just let them build up in the destination folder used by the animating program. There must have been around 100 or so files of all different sizes.

After finishing up work a few days ago, I shut down the computer as usual. The next morning, I opened the folder to find they were all gone. I never moved them, or deleted them. There has been no notification of any kind of system issue. I have looked over the event viewer, and even though I don't really know what I should be looking for, all the entries seem to follow the same type of actions with nothing to suggest there was some kind of system failure or that I 'accidentally' deleted all the files.

My laptop has an SSD. It is around a year old.

When I run a file recover program, it shows they are all there (somewhere?) but of course, to actually recover the files, I would need to purchase the full program (surprise me...)

Is there any way I can get these files back without using a recovery program? What could have caused the files to vanish in the first place? This happened a day after the crowd strike debacle, could it have something to do with that?

Thank you for any help or suggestions,

Kambell

Likely corrupted file system, what does folder properties show?
Try with checkdisk (chkdsk/f) command as well as system checks like sfc /runnow. Files may not have"vanished", just their addresses corrupt. Before doing that I would clone whole drive and try repairs on it first.
Depending on importance of those files,paying for good recovery tools is much cheaper than sending to professional recovery service.

 

[kambell soup]

Hi CountMike,

Thanks for your reply. I will try your suggestions soon as. The destination folder was in C. drive, which is the operating system drive as well. Will cloning affect the system? This is my work computer and I'd hate to lose work time over this. Since the files vanished, I have sent one more file to the folder. Will that cause issues with finding the other files? The folder properties show 0 bytes of everything, dated the day and time I opened the folder to find everything missing. Thanks.

 

[SkyNetRising]

When I run a file recover program, it shows they are all there (somewhere?) but of course, to actually recover the files, I would need to purchase the full program (surprise me...)

What program? Can you show a screenshot?
(upload to imgur.com and post link)

With SSDs - after some time you won't be able to recover deleted files.
This is because of SSD maintenance being run regularly - trim/garbage collection.
So if you do not manage to recover your files before maintenance window (in less than a week), they are gone forever (might already be gone).

The destination folder was in C. drive, which is the operating system drive as well.

Were you using some temp folder to store your files?
What is full path to the folder?

 

[fzabkar]

DMDE's free version can recover up to 4000 files of any size from any one folder per click.

https://dmde.com/

 

[kambell soup]

Hi SkyNetRising,

The recovery program is EaseUS Data Recovery.

This is the screenshot...

https://imgur.com/a/OMAw1Ru

View: https://imgur.com/a/OMAw1Ru


I'm pretty sure it wasn't a temp folder.

This is the full path - "C:\Users\MSI HL\Documents\MiniTool MovieMaker\output"

Thanks

 

[mmp09]

files may vanish if bad sectors develop on storage media.
It might be too late by now if it was System drive.
Disconnect the SSD immediately if you want to make some sort of file recovery. OS writes many chunks of data always on system drive and chances of files in free space getting overwritten is high.

Connect your SSD to another computer and try out everything you want to try.

 

[stonecarver]

I wonder if by chance they some how went into AppData "hidden folder" and look in ------Local--- as some programs dump there saves in there.

Look for a MiniTool MovieMaker folder, there might or might not be one but worth looking in there or in the Temp folder see if any of your videos got stored there as well.

 

[kambell soup]

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the great suggestions regarding my post.

Kambell