I just flushed my entire music collection PLEASE HELP

[ChannelMaster]

Good morning to all. I'm in a bit of a distress right now. Last night I came home really tired and for some reason, I accidentally pulled my large (read very large) Jukebox folder over the WIndows 7 Recycle Bin and allowed it to empty. Now you now how Windows simply flushes very large contents rather than letting it sit in the Recycle Bin.

I've now spent most of the night updating myself on file recovery software and everything I find (and try) display the files I wish so hard to recover BUT they are displayed randomly, that is, outside of their containing folder. It will be incommensurably difficult for me to sort this all by genre, deccade, etc. beyond the recovery process if files are to be restored let's say to a folder named "MP3 Recovery".

So my question is this: is there a software that would be good enough to see deleted FOLDERS in addition to files so that I could drag out entire folders instead of just file... to the tune of 30 000 of them!

I have spent years ripping my entire CD collection (not to mention old vinyls) that I have since parted with and I don't think I can stand the thought of dealing with a ton of stray files that were so carefully stored.

Now I do have a backup somewhere done on the Spring of last year but so many changes and so much cleanup went into this since that it makes the backup literally obsolete.

Where I stand right now:

1) I have launched PARETO LOGIC DATA RECOVERY and will let it run the entire day if need be and if nothing else, will restore everything that it can fetch before I surrender to the tedious process of sorting things out. Hopefully some of you will come up with a better solution.

2) Technically, this consisted of a 220 GB folder with 9 sub-folders (or categories) that was flushed as part of a 640 GB drive that still had about a third of free space so I know for a fact (after running an overnight scan in the background) that everything is there. I think I'm in a confort zone as far as meeting the requirements for full (raw) recovery.

3) The PC has not been restarted in a very long while and is not running hot, I'm not running heavy apps (other than recovery software and IE at the moment) so unless an act o God comes into play or an otherwise power failure, I should be fine.

4) Forget about putting things in the Recycle Bin (or worse yet, emptying it), that would send older deleted items (as part of the deleted queue) into oblivion and you know I don't want that!!!

Thank you my digital friends from a very desperate digital collector. CM

[grog]

Which drive was this folder on? If it was on your C: drive then stop using the computer immediately, and especially don't install any software. Files in your Recycle Bin are safe while they're in there because they aren't really deleted yet, but a folder that size would be way too large for the Recycle Bin so they would have been simply deleted.

Once a file has been deleted the data is still there but the space is marked as free. That's why it's so important to stop using the computer - any new files you write can overwrite some of those blocks. If it's the C: drive, you need to be very careful because Windows is constantly writing to that drive with temporary files, browser cache, etc. The safest way to try to recover files from a system drive is to shut the computer down, remove the drive, and connect it as an external drive on another computer and work on it that way. Even if it's not the C: drive you still need to be careful because you still might have applications using that drive so it's still safer to operate on it from another computer.

If you don't have another computer available then you can also use one of the various recovery programs that have a bootable ISO. That will also prevent the OS or applications from writing to the drive.

[hugh]

I would google on recovering deleted files or similar keyword search. There is many pieces of software that can recover provided you have not overwritten something.

The less you make changes (by running software that can create, edit or delete files) the better chance you have of recovery.

[ChannelMaster]

Hugh and grog. I thank you very much for your advices. Like I said, I left the PC running all night for scan purposes. I have copied about 32 MB of applications onto the computer since last night and have done nothing but scans. I will therefore take the advice of turning off the machine and will proceed to mount the SATA drive as slave on another machine and will perform the recovery from there.

Thanks guys. Let's hope this works.

I'm still hanging by the way to my original question of whether folders can be recovered (like 60s Gold, 70s Gold, so on and so forth) which would save me from the never-ending game of drag and drop.

See you on the flip side, that is, on that other salvation machine I can pluck the disk in.

[NeilN]

Are the MP3's tagged with the folder or genre names perchance? Software like Directory Opus will create folders and move files into them based on tags.

[Jake]

Honestly I think you are going to have to give up. Since the files are on the same partition as your boot drive the number of re-writes (not to mention you installing software) will have put a million holes in your deleted data. You might rescue some files but if will be a partial recovery and judging from your level of organization nothing like how you left it. Depending on the software it may claim it rescued a file but half-way though a song you get a heart-stopping screech coming out of your speakers for 3 seconds. I speak from experience.

If it was a removable drive then your changes would have been a lot higher.

I would go back to your backup and start the re-organization. Or better yet use 'Tune-up' or something like that to automatically fix and organize your music.

[blueroomelectro]

I don't mean to rub salt in the wound but since external HDDs are so cheap I don't understand why people don't run backups. HDDs are likely to crash or corrupt eventually and 220GB of MP3 music is a massive library.

[ScaryBob]

I am assuming there is no backup available. If so, this was going to happen eventually, either through a drive failure or other mishap. I keep two backups of important files, three of the music collection. Another lesson I learned to not turn off the confirm dialog on file delete and the recycle bin. I also do not have the recycle bin on the desktop. It's just too easy to do an accidental drag and drop to the wrong location. I know this advice is a little late but it's been learned from similar experiences.

[milkster]

I have used a free program called TestDisk from CGSecurity to recover outlook .pst files in the past with this program and things worked great. This program can recover many different types of files.

I don't remember if it recovers folders like you wish, but I would definitely give it a try. You can find it here: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

[57]

Again a bit late, but perhaps useful for the future. I run "Time Machine" on my Mac. I assume there's something similar for the PC which might have saved these files with a few button presses. Also always back up files you care about, with at least one copy away from your home (in case of fire, thieves, etc.).

Good luck and let us know how things turn out.

[Exid0r]

Originally Posted by ChannelMaster

Now I do have a backup somewhere done on the Spring of last year but so many changes and so much cleanup went into this since that it makes the backup literally obsolete.

That is on an external drive?

Still must be better than nothing. Would be an opportunity to revisit your collection, perhaps reorganize and/or update.

Windows 7's built-in backup program is actually quite easy to use.

[ChannelMaster]

Will update later from scan/recovery PC. Just purchased a Sata adapter for external use. Let's cross our collective (along with a little prayer) and hope this process works.

Right now, my weapon of choice leans towards Pareto Data Recovery.

[ChannelMaster]

Update: I just blew my hard drive. So I guess recovery is out of the question. I was all prepped up, had a good PC running with Comtrack Easy Recovery, ready for a scan, just returned from purchasing a brand new SATA-to-USB adapter and basically had everything figured out... when... when all of a sudden two prongs of standard 5-pin power connector used to interface with the SATA power connector came out of their socket.

So I looked at the color code of a PC power supply, tried to replicate and connected back. The wires started to get warm right away. Then I pulled everything out, connected the SATA drive to my PC and the power supply goes in to protect mode. When I unplug the drive, the PC powers up again.

Basically, I bluew up the drive. The drive, and eveything on it is now gone gone gone.


That's it, that's all. I find very little else to say right now. I don't suppose there's any way a shop can revive a drive beyond its internal power supply is there?

[Jake]

Better quit while you are ahead. I think it is time to do what I suggested in post 6.

[milkster]

I'm not sure how much all these songs are worth to you, but eventhough you may have blown the circuit board on the Drive, the Data is still there on the platters. Data recovery shops can most likely recover the data still. They will need to replace the board first and then perform their recovery procedures. Its all a matter of how much you are willing to pay to get this done.

One shop I found very friendly and honest is in Missiassauga called Fixsys - www.fixsys.ca
Another is a big company called cbl data recovery - www.cbldatarecovery.com