0

First, I'm IT pro with 20 years of experience. But I'm really confused here.

Today I visited my mom. During the visit I copied some photos from CF card using laptops cardreader, and also copied a downloaded file (Camera firmware) back to CF. Nothing else. Not sure if this has anything to do with what happened next.

Now I'm back home and my mom calls me - she says she lost her videos, a whole folder of downloaded mp4. She watched videos from it yesterday and now can't find them. I connect to her and see this:

About 20 mp4 sized from 0.5 to 4 gigs downloaded in past few days are in Firefox download history. "File was moved or missing". Okay.

Recycle bin - some bad photos I deleted today after copying, nothing else.

WinDirStat - ok I see some big mp4, those are old, nothing here. So folder was not accidentally moved.

Recuva - yeah I see around 10 deleted mp4 here, yay. Can be restored. But! Those are videos my mom already watched and deleted them. So again nothing.

Well, I'm out of ideas. Files not moved, and not deleted. Where are they? No traces, but they are in download history.

Mom has single c: drive, no USB flashes, no network shares.

Windows 10 20H2 laptop with SSD if this matters.

Improve this question
8
  • It is likely that they were moved afterall. I would search for the filenames and search for the whole harddisk. Also, not sure if you used Recuva on the entire disk or only the downloads folder?
    – LPChip
    Commented Nov 23, 2020 at 10:00
  • Which directory did you place these files in exactly?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Nov 23, 2020 at 10:02
  • WinDirStat lists all mp4, they are clearly visible because they are large. Old mp4s are there, new - no. Exact folder is unknown (mom isn't too god with computers). I ran Recuva over the whole drive. I tried file name search too.
    – Eugene V
    Commented Nov 23, 2020 at 10:03
  • You are aware that CF isn't very good for long time storage right? You copied the files to the laptop then copied them back to the CF. When you did that where did you put the files on the laptop?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Nov 23, 2020 at 10:15
  • Photos on CF are fine. mp4s that vanished were on HDD.
    – Eugene V
    Commented Nov 23, 2020 at 14:55

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

Shadow copy from Nov 19 had it all. Shadow explorer helped to restore everything.

I'm asked for details. Here they are: I downloaded "Shadow explorer" (https://www.shadowexplorer.com/downloads.html), ran it, selected most recent snapshot, found the vanished folder, and clicked "export".

Here is the manual: https://www.shadowexplorer.com/documentation/manual.html

Ok, now bad news. Files were restored sucessfully and in full size, but their content was actually just zeroes and zeroes.

I gave up. The end.

Improve this answer
1
  • This would be a better answer if you explained how you recovered the files, or at least provided a link to such an explanation.  … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Please do not respond in comments; edit your answer to make it clearer and more complete.
    – Scott - Слава Україні
    Commented Nov 23, 2020 at 22:48

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .