Windows 7: Help recovering files in my Documents folder (not the actual folder)

Hello,

I hope someone can help me recover the files that were once in my Documents folder. Here's the background...

I recently upgraded to a SSD and, to make a long story short, moved my "Documents" folder on my HDD in an attempt to save everything on another drive, in case I lost the data on the HDD and wasn't successful in transferring everything over to the SSD. Basically, I just right-clicked and moved the folder to another drive (not realizing Microsoft had their own plans for the Documents folder). Anyway, I got everything transferred to the SSD, then moved the Documents folder to the new drive. At some point, I finally looked inside the folder and it was empty.

Although I created a backup, another (huge) mistake I made was I did not keep previous versions of the backup (.vhd file). So the only backup I had was the one after I had moved my Documents folder. I got some software to try and recover the previous .vhd but they are corrupted or damaged and can't be "attached" or mounted to pull the old files from the old Windows image.

Most of the documents I was trying to recover are PDFs. I was able to find them too (using Filescavenger) but none of the PDFs are usable; they are all corrupt or damaged. Also, none of the PDF recovery software I used was able to repair them.

So, has anyone else experienced this and was able to recover from it? I did a search for the pdf's on all the drives, but none of the files that were in my Documents folder were found in the search. It seems crazy that they would just disappear. Any help is appreciated.

cheers,
Nathaniel

ps. Yes, I know I should have confirmed the transfer of files, kept old backups, etc. ...sigh. Also, I have tried restored the original location of the Documents folder using "technique #2" from one of the tutorials.