I posted this in hardware originally, because this involves an external harddrive. Here's the old thread:
http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,146907.0.htmlBasically, a folder on my external HDD vanished after Windows 8 went to sleep. Initially the folder was still showing, but with 0kb, and upon double clicking the folder icon, the computer said the filepath didn't exist. when I unplugged the drive and plugged it back in, the folder simply wasn't there.
After a lot of suggestions that didn't work, I used Auslogics Disk Defrag to analyse the drive and it found the files that were in the folder, in the recycle bin. But they don't show up as being in there when I open the recycle bin folder, and they can't be restored (I've unhidden all files, including system files). I've also tried the file recovery programs Recuva and TestDisk. Neither of these could see the files. I tried defragging one of the files with Auslogics and it said that "the file was deleted or moved" and couldn't be defragged.
I haven't added anything to the drive since the folder disappeared so they haven't been overwritten. All that seems to have happened is that the path to the initial folder has disappeared, but the rest of the filepath, for all the files, is preserved within the recycle bin (though, admittedly, I'm not an expert and that may mean nothing). I copied the entire drive by selecting the drive icon in File Explorer and pasted it to another drive. Despite the external drive saying that 80GB of space is being used, only 20GB was copied. The 60GB that wasn't copied matches the size of the folder that disappeared.
Does anyone have any ideas on what has happened or how to fix it?
