[mtsaint]

so i am away from my computer for a couple of days, modding my dad's psp which by the way he is very happy with, and some folders are missing from my desktop and another folder on an entirely separate drive. The folder on my deskyop "ARCHIVE" had alot of useful things in it and i am sad to see it gone. the other folder on my secondary sata drive titled "NEWFOLDER" also having useful data on it is missing too. Keep in mind i have never had whole folders go dissapearing before and this is giving me quite a scare. i ran disk check and i recieved no error report. What concerns me is did i get hacked and why would someone specifically erase certain folders, is there a way to recover lost data, is there a way to recover missing disk space.... it just not adding up at the moment. my archive is just that a archive of important files programs and document alphabetized in folders A to Z
i miss it so.... so ... any experience in lost data is appreciated

[mtsaint]

okay i might have accidentally deleted some stuff but i dont think so and yes this is very frustrating

[CDsDontBurn]

i don't mean to sound rude if i do.

we all know that having a single copy of anything important isn't the smartest thing. we should always have a backup of whatever it is you have on your hard drives else where; such as a network drive, a server, burnt onto a CD/DVD, etc. i know i back up my stuff onto DVDs, but i don't do it frequently enough. yea, it's a bad thing that i don't do it enough, and i could have lost upto a year's worth of valuable data, reports, homework assignments, etc.

i hope that this has taught you a lesson and that you will have more than one copy of your work from now on in the future.

again, i don't mean to sound rude or anything, but when dealing with computers, it's just a fact that we have to accept that hard drive failure, user error, or anything else can happen that we can lose our data.

as to recovering your information. data is never really "lost" providing that the platters are still in decent enough condition. and from your post, the data was just deleted from the hard drive. it will always be there, but the process of deleting that information is pretty damned expensive. according to LHC, seagate charges $700 (USD) - $2,900 (USD) depending on the type of data recovery process used. and if the data is that valuable to you, then you will shell out the dough.

[mtsaint]

eh its not that valuable 700 dollars no can do i'll just have live without it besides i was going to clean out the 'ol archive any way sooner or later. all i really have to do is recover the space not the actually info this way i dont have unused space taking up room

[TheBlackCat]

There are various freeware deleted data recovery programs. Go to Nonags disk managements and just do a "find" on the page for the word "recovery". They have a very wide variety and one of them might get the job done. The key is do as little on the computer as humanly possible. Data that is deleted is simply marked as no longer needed. It still remains in the hard drive until more data is written, at which point it is overwritten with new data. If you have not added much since that time one of these programs may be able to get at least some of it back.

[Dyre Straits]

Originally Posted by mtsaint

so i am away from my computer for a couple of days, modding my dad's psp which by the way he is very happy with, and some folders are missing from my desktop and another folder on an entirely separate drive. The folder on my deskyop "ARCHIVE" had alot of useful things in it and i am sad to see it gone. the other folder on my secondary sata drive titled "NEWFOLDER" also having useful data on it is missing too. Keep in mind i have never had whole folders go dissapearing before and this is giving me quite a scare. i ran disk check and i recieved no error report. What concerns me is did i get hacked and why would someone specifically erase certain folders, is there a way to recover lost data, is there a way to recover missing disk space.... it just not adding up at the moment. my archive is just that a archive of important files programs and document alphabetized in folders A to Z
i miss it so.... so ... any experience in lost data is appreciated

First of all, the fact that you were not using the computer for a couple of days may have triggered the Windows Desktop Clean-up utility. This utility, if it's turned on, will remove unused Desktop Icons after a period of time.

So, the question is: Have you tried using Windows Explorer to see if the folders are actually missing from their original location? If not, they may actually still be there but just not showing on the Desktop.