Files Mysteriously Disappearing from Hard Drive

[patlaw]

A computer has a 1TB drive as the boot drive (C. It had 800GB of files on it. When the user booted recently, most of the files were deleted from the hard drive. I installed the drive in another computer, and the files show up as deleted. The computer passes malware and virus scans without issue.

I'm currently using Recuva to try to recover the available files (about 80% of the deleted files appear to be recoverable, but some critical files are not.) The recovered files are being saved to an external USB drive.

The only time I've had this problem before was corrected with chkdsk. I'm very cautious about doing anything with this drive until I have recovered all that I can manually.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to what is going on with this drive? It passed Spinrite with no issues. The computer is Windows 7 Home Edition 64-bit.

 

[richc46]

You may want to try to get back all the lost files with the Native Back up and Restore. It is native to Windows Seven.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/186997/windows_7s_builtin_backup.html

 

[patlaw]

Richard, how would I use Backup and Restore if the files are not already backed up? Does the program access the shadow copies?

 

[richc46]

Back up and restore, backs up automatically. It is based on shadow copies.

 

[patlaw]

Thanks. When Recuva finishes its run, I'll definitely investigate this option and report back.

 

[patlaw]

Backup was never set up on the computer. When I run it, I get, "Windows Backup has not been set up." Under Restore, "Windows could not find a backup for this computer." Am I overlooking something?