CHKDSK deleted a bunch of my files!

[macko]

I was hesitant when Vista told me I needed to run it, but foolishly I did it. I've never fully trusted Vista as it seems to sometimes give me hard drive problems when only moments before that drive was totally fine connected to an XP box, anyway.

I was looking through some backups, changing SATA hard drives on the fly, no problems. I didn't have enough ports so one drive was on USB, then I found what I wanted and unplugged it from USB and moved it to SATA to start working on the files. Vista told me to run CHKDSK, and like I said, I did it. I saw a lot of "deleting index..." messages and I knew it was bad news.

After CHKDSK completed a whole lot of files and dirs are gone. This was a general mix of personal backups, photos, video, some large files, but mostly thousands of small ones.

Anyway, since this was a result of CHKDSK deleting indexes it doesn't seem to fall into the usual categories, like accidental deletion or format. I have been approaching it from an accidental format perspective since that seems the most similar. I'm just wondering if anyone here, knowing my specific situation, has some tips or advice.

[GDH]

Yes, chkdsk is a bit of a nightmare, because it makes so many changes to the disk data recovery can be difficult.

Do you currently have a whole bunch of CHKDSK files on your disk? (they may be hidden files)?

I suggest you download Recover My Files v4 from www.recovermyfiles.com

You will probably need to try both the "Recover Drive" mode and the "Recover Files" mode to see which gives you the best results.

Run it in evaluation mode and only purchase a key to save your files if you can preview them in the results window.

[macko]

Originally Posted by GDH

Do you currently have a whole bunch of CHKDSK files on your disk? (they may be hidden files)?

There were some, but not enough to be all the missing data. However I did not consider the possibility of them being hidden.

[GDH]

Hi

Download Recover My Files from Data Recovery Software to Undelete Files; Disk recovery; Recover Deleted Files.

Run the program, close down the wizard screen, and click on the OPTIONS button and in the ADVANCED tab. Put a tick in the box for "scan for lost files across the whole device (and not only in the free space)".

The run a "Recover Files" search on the drive letter and select the file types that are most important for you to recover.

By running this scan you will also be including any CHKDSK files which may contain valid data.