Hi, I recently rebuilt my machine (see system specs) and when I went to pop in my old HDD as a secondary drive to pull some files from it, Windows decided it needed to run chkdsk on it. I tried to stop it, as this is a 500GB drive so I knew it would take forever, but I couldn't stop it. So after a few hours, it finished and let me in, but now all of the files are missing. This was my old C: (primary) drive, so it should have Windows, Users, Program Data, etc folders but it doesn't. it just has a few empty folders (Nvidia, Intel...) However when you check the properties of the disk, it shows that several GB's are used, so I know my data is around there somewhere. Changing the folder options to view hidden does not help. The OS on this disk was Vista Ultimate 32-bit. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks

I haven't tried anything yet. Is there a freeware that works?

Hi ,

Undelete apps. may not always find the same things - so you may like to try a couple of free ones.

This is a good one

Glary Undelete

and here are a couple more

Undelete Plus - Download. Free file recovery software. Retrieve accidentally deleted files.

Download Pandora Recovery - free file recovery utility

Hope it helps

SIW2

Hi i have just used glary undelete-free software download.it seemed to work ok, 4978 files were restored and seemed ok however when i have tried to open an excel sheet it produces goble de gook. Please help, what am i doing wrong?

Thank you for replying to me, sorry but I don't understand what you mean, could you please explain.

Hi Julie,

It works better if you only restore the folders that are shown as in very good condition.

You shouldn't have lost any data using the undelete - it copies the data from the hd - it will still be there.

You could scan again and this time only restore the files marked as very good condition. Scan the drive, then click the Filter button at the top right.

In the new window that opens, tick the box By State, select Very Good, and click OK.



Any files that are not in very good condition will have some damage and are probably not worth bothering with.

You could then do the same thing with another program , eg Recuva and see if that rescues anything different .

Hope it helps

SIW2