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Help needed - files are gone
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Posted by: matt.modica
On my flash drive, a folder named 'My documents' dissapeared and now a folder named 'FOUND' is there with a bunch of recovered file fragments and a file labeled 'My documents' is also there. Also, before the folder dissappeared, I was only using about 120 MB of space on the flash drive but now there is 230 MB of spaced being used. I have done a virus/malware scan of the entire flash drive with nothing found. And I have all the data backed up on my hard disk but I would like to know what is going on, and if its possible, I would like to recover the files. Also, there was another folder named 'School work' but that was not affected.
Posted by: Outlaw
FOUND.000 is the default folder made by chkdsk when it recovers damaged files or folders. Since your My Documents folder is missing, that would be it. The files are probably still usable if you're able to identify their proper types. You'll somehow have to find out what kind of files they are, then rename their extensions and try to open them. Since you probably have a pretty good idea of what files were in there, you should be able to recover most, if not all.
To get started, look at the file sizes. Text files are usually pretty small, images a bit bigger, movies even more so. This whole process will take quite a bit of time, as you can probably imagine.
As for why it happened, do you use the icon in your system tray to safely remove USB devices or do you just pull it out? The former would be the better choice.
Posted by: matt.modica
Thanks for the reply. Occasionaly, I just pull it out, but windows never said anything, so I didn't think it was that big of an issue. But I will do the Safely remove hardware thing. Thanks.
Posted by: FadedMaster
I too usually just unplug flash drives, though I make sure it's not being read when I do. Never had a problem like that either.
Posted by: uh...ok
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Originally Posted by FadedMaster
I too usually just unplug flash drives, though I make sure it's not being read when I do. Never had a problem like that either.
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It's probably not a good idea, since you don't actually know how the filesystem actually works. Of course, if you don't ever store any crucial and unreplicated data on your flash drive, it should be ok.
I mean, you can't really damage it by removing it (unless you try to do it during a read/write operation) without first "Safely Removing" it, but depending on the device, you may incur data loss.
Posted by: matt.modica
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I make sure it's not being read when I do.
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Thats what I was doing; I never unplugged it when programs were using it.
Posted by: FadedMaster
Well, I guess it wasn't all in vain. I learned not to do that anymore. Haha, learn from others mistakes.  Try recovering any of it for the heck of it, since ya have it backed up anyways?
Posted by: matt.modica
Ended up recovering one file that I had modified recently and then just used the backup program to restore the rest that was saved. So let this be a lesson to all: always back up your data a lot and unplug flash drives correctly.
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