Hard Drive Funny Business

[Ephirith]

Earlier today (yesterday) I was installing a... complimentary copy of Battlefield 1942. (Although I did own the game once but lost the CD's, whatever)

Norton didn't like the keygen files and, in a masterstroke of poor decision-making, I exempted the keygens, restored them, and used them. It felt a little like unprotected rumpus humpus with a very nasty hooker and I'm ashamed to be have been so careless.

Anyway, fast forward to about an hour ago, I wanted to listen to a song before bed, so I navigated to where I keep my music and the folder was gone. I looked around everywhere, recycle bin, toggled hidden files, etc... nowhere. My hard drive, which had previously shown 80GB remaining, now shows 311GB of space. What the fuck.

What I find odd was that this seems to have been the only folder on my computer that was affected. In this directory, among various sub-folders, I keep my music, photos, movies, TV shows, important documents, basically everything important that isn't a game or on my desktop.

I ran a utility to show deleted files, and they didn't show up. Then I initiated a system restore to the point at which I was installing the game and keygens, which was the earliest point available. Oddly enough, some of my files returned. The main folder is there, but 95% of the shit inside is missing. My TV show folder for example... most of the folders are completely gone-- those that remain only contain subtitles, and even then only for some seasons.

Luckily I keep a backup of this stuff on an external hard drive, and I think all I've lost is some more recent music files.

But I'm curious what the hell happened: If this was a virus, why and how did it target the most annoying folder possible? How did it know? It could have wiped my download folder, my games folder, microsoft office, my desktop, but all that stuff is untouched. Any theories about how this happened? Maybe it was a bug!

*edit* Just realized System Restore doesn't bring back that kind of stuff. Stupid virus deleted only one folder-- not the most important one, just the most frustrating one.

[Ephirith]

Nah, folder was separate from where I was using the keygen and Norton never touched it.

[Ephirith]

I'm guessing it was probably something like that, although I'm confounded why it didn't touch the exact same content in other folders, or any of my pirated game directories.

This is the first time I've ever lost data to a virus, guess it could have been worse.

[Myth]

Try this
Open command prompt, and type;
Cd\ to take you to the root of drive
Dir *.mp4 /s (Change *.mp4 to match the extension of any of your files.)
See if it finds anything.

[radditsu]

Originally Posted by Myth [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Try this
Open command prompt, and type;
Cd\ to take you to the root of drive
Dir *.mp4 /s (Change *.mp4 to match the extension of any of your files.)
See if it finds anything.

UN CHECK hidden files.


http://m.download.cnet.com/Restorati...-10322950.html

A quick and dirty deleted file check

[Ephirith]

Originally Posted by Myth [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Try this
Open command prompt, and type;
Cd\ to take you to the root of drive
Dir *.mp4 /s (Change *.mp4 to match the extension of any of your files.)
See if it finds anything.

All it found was files from my download folder which I hadn't organized into the missing folders yet. I tried one extension that I know was only located in the deleted folders, and it didn't turn up anything.

Originally Posted by radditsu [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

UN CHECK hidden files.


http://m.download.cnet.com/Restorati...-10322950.html

A quick and dirty deleted file check

That's the utility I used. There was no trace of any of my files, except ones I had deleted out of the missing folders in the past.

[Ephirith]

Oh God, I just looked on my external and at some point I got rid of my backup, probably temporarily because I was going to update it but never did ><

Every picture I've ever taken is gone

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

FUCKING RETARD AHAAHAHHHHHHHHH

[Myth]

Bummer. Sounds like the data was deleted.
If you want the data back, stop using the drive the files were on immediately. Deleted data is flagged by the hard disk as overwritable. Every new file created is slowly overwriting the recently "deleted" files.

Get a copy of R-Studio, slave the drive, and scan it. OnTrack easy recovery professional might find the files too but I've had little luck with it. I don't think either of these are free...

I've used R-Studio on "wiped" drives (most likely only a 1 pass wipe) and it recovered nearly all of the important data (pics, music, etc). Very useful tool. If you can't find a copy, let me know. I have an enterprise license available to me.