All my anime has Dissapeared!

[horo_horo27]

I turned on my computer this morning and ran azereus for a while, and when i came back (a few hours later), all of the anime on my computer had been deleted. It wasn't in the recycling bin or anything and all the folders that it HAD been in were now empty. No one says that they touched my computer at all and i know I didn't delete them, does anyone know what might have happened or if theres anyway to recover them. Or at the very least help figure out what happened, I'm a little distraught about this, it was over 40 gigs. Also Azereus can't find the torrent files either, for downloading or seeding.

Much thanks
~Scott

[Ledgem]

Did you by any chance have that folder located in the "My Documents" folder?

It should be possible to recover the files using data recovery programs. I made a thread about data recovery, and many programs - they should be able to help you, too. Running scandisk might turn up your files as well, but they'd likely all be renamed as a result.

What security software are you running? Did you do anything out of the ordinary with your system recently? Any Windows updates?

[Gundam Zero Force]

Originally Posted by kayos

Once you've recovered your files, you should probably think about backing up your data on a external HD or burnable disc.

Just to prevent another crisis from happening.

yes that is a good idea, I back eveything up on DVD's. It comes in handy when you get a new computer too becasue then you can just simply copy and paste instead of trying to organize everything all over. In the past copying things to DVD's has saved me a lot of grief and trouble. When I accidentally lost something I coud just put it back on the computer and carry on . . .

It is very strange that the folder where your anime was in located is still intact, but everything inside it dissapeared. Maybe you accidentally wrote over the existing files. I hope that did not happen but that is all I can think of that might have happened . . . .

[horo_horo27]

No they were right in the "my computer" directory. I have AVG anti spyware and anti virus (both free) and zone alarm firewall (also free, what can i say I'm a moocher ^^; ). I'll try the data recovery stuff now too. Thanks a lot
btw, i have been trying to do burn dvds but for some reason or another a complication arises and i put iust off again >.>

[horo_horo27]

ok i ran PC Inspector and recovered some of it... i think... they're over 400 files on my desktop now saying cluster so-and-so
help?!

[GHDpro]

Sounds like the file system of the hard drive was badly corrupted. Recovering from problems like that might be a bit tricky, as even if files are recovered the tool that recovers them might not know what file is what (and gives everything generic names).

Another tip for the future: if you're running XP, make sure the file system is NTFS and not FAT. FAT (or FAT32 to be precise) is more likely to corrupt in this way than NTFS is.

[Furuno]

Originally Posted by horo_horo27

ok i ran PC Inspector and recovered some of it... i think... they're over 400 files on my desktop now saying cluster so-and-so
help?!

What's your harddisk type? How old is it? And what happened to the cluster?
There's also possibility your harddisk is damaged/exposed to magnetic field so your data's corrupted...

[Ledgem]

For the future, don't store stuff in "My Computer." Anyone reading this, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd just imagine that it'd make data recovery a bit more difficult if you have to manually find the directory. Where does My Computer reside, and on which drive? Too much trouble, just put it in a hard drive's base level if nothing else.

[NightWish]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

don't store stuff in "My Computer."

Actually, you can't put stuff in "My Computer" directly (at least you can't on XP/2000). The folder doesn't really exist. I assume the original poster is mistaken and simply means something different to what we take "My Computer" to mean. My guess would be they mean "My Documents" the desktop, or possibly the root of one of the drives (though the later is slightly less likely given that, by default, windows likes to present you with a "protective" warning page when you try to view the contents).

[Jinto]

My Computer just lists all drives. Though it is more a view on devices than a precise declaration of the storage area.
Actually it doesn't matter where the files reside logically on the disk. More important is their physical residence.
That the files suddenly disappeared without a warning or a crash is very unlikely. I don't know what to think about this case.

edit: NightWish been faster

[hobbes_fan]

don't think it's HDD failure, if it were, wouldn't the HDD be pretty much stuffed from all points? ie XP would have major issues even if it did boot up. If it was a bad sector or cluster, the files still should be there just unusable. If it was magnetic field damage I doubt that'd be just your problems. I may be wrong though

I say someone's been lying and deleted stuff. I mean if the directory's still there but empty, someone else would have had to go in and select those items and delete. I don't know of any spyware/malware/virus that just targets specific media files. I mean maybe there is that'll attack specific file types, but that'd mean all files on your pc that are of the same type are gone. Nor do I think that some freak act of nature would just delete those files only and leave everything else intact.

This is just my assumption. From what you say ths PC is shared by other people.

[WanderingKnight]

I say someone's been lying and deleted stuff.

Ooh! Conspiracy theories! NOW we're talking!

Seriously, though, it's pretty unlikely for there to be a software or hardware failure with an unique output like that. The first guess, of course, is always a hard drive failure, but like hobbes_fan pointed out, it's pretty strange, not to say impossible, to have an HDD failure that affects a single logical directory. And it'd be the first time I hear about malware attacking media files.

[Syaoran]

Could have something to do with Java. Azureus on Linux often gives me I/O Errors and Disk Write Errors, while the disk is perfectly healthy.

[hobbes_fan]

I've had those on utorrent on XP, but it only affects files being d/l (but forcing it to resume usually has no ill effects) files are perfectly playable after they finish. I think ts more of a fault of the client manglng the packets of data so they don't match with what's been d/l.

[felix]

Horo, are you saying ONLY the anime disappeared.
I suggest you just try to give a try at recovering the data before indulging in more exotic possibilities.
( See Ledgem's first post )

Originally Posted by Jinto Lin

My Computer just lists all drives. Though it is more a view on devices than a precise declaration of the storage area.
Actually it doesn't matter where the files reside logically on the disk. More important is their physical residence.

Sounds really messy. Do you have any sort of structure or do you just add new folders and dump stuff there. Well I guess that's good in it's own way, meaning people can't come in and delete some specific mass of information with ease.

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by Cats

Sounds really messy. Do you have any sort of structure or do you just add new folders and dump stuff there. Well I guess that's good in it's own way, meaning people can't come in and delete some specific mass of information with ease.

Huh? I suppose its just a little misunderstanding. I meant "My Computer" as explorer link to a window that lists all sorts of drive devices. However, you are unintentionally not completely wrong, since my computer as in my own PC is a little messy (I have data from uh... back of 1995 still lying about... somewhere... ).
My comment on the physical residence of data was meant to deal with the hardware failure idea. A hardware failure would cause data faults at certain physical regions, possibly affecting several logical data structures. But to affect only certain logical anime related regions (entirely), that would be a very unlikely (impossible) scenario for a hardware failure.

[horo_horo27]

Ok sorry for taking so long to reply, Nightwish was right it was in the root directory of the HDD (ie the path was e:\New Folder).

Syaoran- I don't think i've gotten errors like that from azerus

Cats- To my Knowledge it was everything in that folder (there was non-anime stuff too) and nothing else (again to my knowledge i Haven't checked too hard)

so I'm a little confused about how to actually recover these files if i can. Should i just delete all the clusters lying around on my desktop?

[horo_horo27]

Originally Posted by furuno

What's your harddisk type? How old is it? And what happened to the cluster?
There's also possibility your harddisk is damaged/exposed to magnetic field so your data's corrupted...

My HDD is relatively new its from Tigerdirect its a 160gb E-IDE (product name is something like Maxtor 6G160P0

It could be magnetic something although i hope not.

and finally my hard drive is formatted in NTFS right now

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by horo_horo27

so I'm a little confused about how to actually recover these files if i can. Should i just delete all the clusters lying around on my desktop?

You could try to give these cluster files an .avi ending and trying to watch them... then you will see if it is a video file.. or not (or I am totally wrong and these files mean something different)

[Furuno]

Originally Posted by Jinto Lin

You could try to give these cluster files an .avi ending and trying to watch them... then you will see if it is a video file.. or not (or I am totally wrong and these files mean something different)

I suggest you to try different file format too such as .vob, .mkv, .mp4, etc... If it cannot be played try to opening it with notepad and see what's inside...