600GB of data gone after scandisk

[nicefig]

I was in the middle of syncing my itunes media folder when my pc froze so i did a cold reset. when windows started up it no doubt initiated a scandisk, and i let it run. after the scan, pc restarted and when i got back into windows, entire contents of one of my folders was gone from explorer. all the data inside amounted to about 647GB. from My Computer, hardisk properties showed 650GB out of 698GB capacity was used, which is what's weird. if scandisk destroyed my data or marked it as deleted, it should be 3GB/698GB used. then i can simply get file recovery software to get my stuff back.

but apparently the files have just disappeared while still taking up space.

another weird thing is that my iTunes media folder worth 3gb is unscathed.

scandisk did something to my directories and now 600+gb of my files are lost and unrecoverable because they arent deleted files. there is also no trace of a .chk file. i can do a Select All in the root directory from explorer and only 3GB of data is visible (itunes media folder). a total of 715 files detected. however when i do a scandisk, the log shows over 27,000 files scanned.


Windows 7 Ultimate.

 

[r_manic]

What was in this folder that contained 647GB of data?

 

[Paperdoc]

The fact that the space is "Used" according to Windows is very encouraging. That means that a whole bunch of the data tables that track disk space use are still intact. But there is some corruption of the directory structure so that one or more directory folders themselves are not visible.

I would expect that data recovery software can rescue your stuff, but I cannot recommend any one in particular. Hopefully others who've dealt with this type of problem can be more specific.

In the meantime, don't write anything to the disk. And if at all possible, don't ever boot from it, because merely booting DOES write some new info.

 

[sitec]

For datarecovery as Paperdoc mentioned, I recommend (and sell/use) this tool for those that want to try to recover files themself. http://www.getdata.com/

Its almost foolprove, as long as you follow the menu. It's the only program that I have tested with regular consumer customers, and thay they could use without a problem