MicrostockGroup

Hi,

A folder in my wife's computer containing photos worth of a week work simply vanished from the PC (windows vista home premium). I've been searching throughout the internet but despite several similar problems being reported it's being hard to find a solution.

The folder was not deleted, simply vanished. I've used several data recovery software without any result since none of the images come up under any recover, as well restoring the PC to a previous point.

I'm lost as to what I can do.

Does anyone know about this problem, or have a suggestion?

Thanks.

Thanks, but the program didn't recover the files. The several ones I've used only got one image. No trace of the others.

The problem is that they were not deleted. I think windows somehow "lost" the knowledge that they were there, so they are not registered anywhere has having even existed and the recover programs don't detect them.

Maybe this is a stupid question (but when I'm desperate, I'll try anything...).  Could it have somehow become a 'hidden folder'?  Not sure how you view hidden files and folders in Vista, but it might be worth a try.

From explorer, click Tools (if you can't see tools, the left alt key will make it visible), then Folder options - click the view tab and check Show hidden files and folders.  A long shot but I like your thinking. 

I'll give it a try, but I've run some recovery programs a administrator too and only one image was found.

Not even from microsoft support I've heard a thing yet...

That was my initial thought, since it has happened to me, but unfortunately no. We've searched the whole computer with a partial name of the missing files and a full name of just one and none came up.

Gannet77 is right, the reason is usually an accidental drag/drop.  The only other possibility is a failing hard drive - not likely.

Use the Windows 'Search' function to scan your entire hard driver for .jpg files.  Right-click on an empty spot on your desktop and push F3 to bring it up. Click the arrow next to "Advanced Search" at the right of the toolbar.  Select "Local Disk (C:)"  as Location; enter "*.jpg" as Name; click the Search button.  It will take a while, but if your photos are still on the drive, this will find them.

Hi,

Maybe I wasn't clear at the beginning but it wasn't the RAW originals to get lost, it's been the jpg's with all the processing work on them. If it were the RAW files, that would have been a catastrophe!

Hi,

I've used several search programs, some much better than the one windows tool, and none discovered the jpg images, although they found the raw files which had the same name.

Unfortunately it may be a drive failing. Or just a windows problem, as many have reported similar problems in web forums, but at this moment with little information on a solution.

I would like to thank to all for your help.

The last attempt was to reinstall a full system image on drive C made some months ago, to see if it would "re-map" the drives D and E and make the files appear. Unfortunately it did not work too.

At this moment my wife decided to redo all the work considering the images lost.

Again, thanks for all your help. If anything comes up I'll post the solution so it may be of use in the future.

 

 


I've done that more times than I wish to remember. 

I'm a software engineer and have worked on Windows applications since the mid 90s.   I never once saw Windows 'lose' a file all on its own, or heard of such a case, unless the hard drive was failing.  The file system management code in Windows is now decades old, is running high-volume mission-critical applications all over the world, and can be assumed to be bulletproof.  The only possiblities are user error and hard drive failure.

If you actually lost some files, you need to stop using that computer now, and run a disk integrity check right away, because drive failure is progressive, not a one-time thing.  If you continue to use it, and the magnetic media is losing integrity, you will lose more data.

Once a day for new pictures when I turn it off nothing else.