Most image files suddenly missing but not all

[NZguy]

Hi people's,

1st time poster and really hoping someone can help.

I upgraded to windows 7 on 20th November this year. Fresh install on my C drive. I previously had my photo's on my C drive so backed them all up to one of my storage drives. After the install I copied them all back to the C drive.

There was well over 5,000 photos in over 100 folders.

I never thought to check the folders to make sure the photos copied back ok. I never got a dialogue boxing saying they hadn't so assumed they copied ok.

Since the install of windows I've had issues with my storage drive and ended up formatting it.

Just the other day I went to where my photos are on the C drive and discovered most of them are not there. Every main folder is there, but most of the sub folders are missing and most of the photos are missing.

A few folders do have 5 or so photos out of say 30 - 500 photos but most folders have no photos. Typically my oldest folders don't have any photos showing.

Most folders are showing a file though called ZbThumbnail.info. I think this is because I've enabled show hidden files to see if that would make a difference. From what I know this is associated with a programme called Canon Zoom Browser. I haven't installed this programme since upgrading to Windows 7.

I've tried using EASEUS photo recovery of the C drive and the storage drive to recover the photos but have had no luck. This programme has worked in the past for me with flash cards.

I've tried searching for answers throughout the web and can't come up with much.

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[mitchell65]

Hi NZguy and welcome to the Forum.
First and most important don't save anything to the external hard drive that you formatted.
Then download "Recuver" from here: Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download
install this free software and then do a deep scan of your external hard drive. You must choose a different drive to recover your files to so I would suggest creating a folder called perhaps "recovered" on you C drive.
It will take some time to do a deep scan. Report back here with results Good Luck.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Here are a couple more choices. Sometimes these apps are "free" to find out what they can recover, but you have to pay to actually recover.

Some are designed to recover deleted partitions and others are designed to recover files that were emptied from the recycle bin.

Active@ UNDELETE Software to recover deleted files folders & partitions. Windows XP VISTA 2003 2008.

Partition Recovery Software Recover Deleted or Lost NTFS/FAT Partition

You might also look at Partition Wizard boot disk "mini tool", which has an option to recover lost partitions:

http://www.partitionwizard.com/download.html

It's a boot disk. Download the ISO at the above link, burn the ISO to a CD, and then boot from the CD.

 

[NZguy]

I used Recuva which manged to find a large number of the files but not all. Fortunately I found an old IDE drive which had the majority of the photos on it.

Learnings - when copying a large number of files from one location to another make sure they have successfully copied across, regularly back up your data (once a week) and if you're replacing a hard drive if you've run out of storage, keep your important files on it and hang on to it as you never know... you might need it in the future.

Thanks guys.