I have never had this problem before - and I have been downloading movies and music videos for 8 yrs - only have occasionally lost an entire external HD (and usually can recover using a recovery program). This is the most unusual thing I have seen happen- and never before on this little laptop (HP compaq presario, Vista Home Basic)......
After running all my anti-spyware/virus programs and just before a reboot - I ran Glary utilities, and then ccleaner... a daily routine.... I don't know exactly how/at what point this happened - but after rebooting and looking in my directory in the folder where I store music vids and movies - I noticed that all the movies I had Downloaded in the past week were totally GONE. Evverything else is still there as far as I can see - all the mp3s and misc other file types. It freed up about 10 gigs of space - and nothing was in the recycle bin.
I ran a search and found no trace of any of the abovementioned files.... not a trace.
I am trying to decide between doing a system REPAIR - or a RESTORE to an earlier date - -
or trying the RECUVA program to see if I can get those files back again.
Any suggestionis as to which to try first - or at least an explanation of how this happened?
Am hoping it is not drive-related - as far as I know, my drive is healthy but it has gotten a lot of use lately, been online for long stretches - while I am cleaning up my desktops - so could the drive be breaking down even though HP health check shows no errors or problems?
There is one other thing I have noticed becoming gradually more of a pain -
SHUT DOWN seems to take forever now - despite having used every type of tweak or cleaner I can think of -
Startup isn't bad at all - but Shut-Down was taking 3 mins about a week ago - and now is longer than 10 mins.
(I don't think these 2 things are related but wanted to mention it anyway, just in case).
Thanks for whatever input anyone has. (I just joined today, and did browse all the topics to see if this was addressed, before posting).