Help!!!. How can I recover a really important information I lost from my PC?

Question

Hello everyone. I have a big problem with my PC, and I need your help.

I have bought a portable hard disc (500 GB Western Digital), because I have a lot of information in my PC. In order to release space on my computer, I cut a 100 GB whole folder and started to pasting it on the portable disc, but 3 hours later, when I came back to my PC, I realized that I was completely blocked. After restarting, I found some of the files that I was moving in the original folder, but the majority of them were gone. The portable disc changed its name, now it's called ì}Dc¶v? and on it there's a quantity of files and folders that weren't there before, and their names are with rare characters like the new name of the portable disc. I have tried to change their names but it is impossible. It is supposed that on the disk should have around 400 GB free, but it shows it has 499 GB busy and some MB free.

HELP!!!!!!!!. The information I had on the missed folder is of utmost importance. It corresponds to many years of hard work, it's for real!. I am broke if I don't recover it. Please, tell me how can I do to get it back.

I think if I use a common recovering or restoration software, I am going to have more problems, because as I told you I have seen that portable disc is completely busy now, and if the restoration software tries to save my lost information it is going to write above the lost files and they are going to be lost for ever. Tell me if I am wrong with this. And how can I proceed to fix this problem, and also, please tell me what free software can I download from Internet to get this problem correctly fixed in the most suitable way without losing any bite.

Thank you for helping me. I am going to appreciate it!.

Answer 1

There are several commercial places that do info retrieval.  If it really is that important I would leave it to the experts. Check the phone book or internet for these kinds of places in your locale.  Someone might suggest system restore, but again how much is the info worth to you.  Good luck.

Answer 2

Try system restore if you can.  

Answer 3

It would seem that the files on the hard drive are corrupt, i think the only way to regain control of the portable hard drive is to reformat it using a formating tool like fdisk.exe or PartitionMagic by PowerQuest. I believe a techy store like future shop may be able to regain some of the files, next time you try to move 100 GB worth of files i suggest you do it in smaller batches. like a group of 20 GB and backup the files before you move them

Answer 4

Ok, I'd recommend trying Recuva http://www.recuva.com/ , it works very well. Otherwise, leaving it to pros might be best. but if you want to try something, try recuva.  

Answer 5

Undelete Plus by Touchstone Software is what I use when this happens to me. You can select where the files are restored to, so you could restore the files to a different hard drive (perhaps borrow one from a friend) so that it doesn't overwrite your important data.