Recuva caused a huge problem for me

[ednja]

I ran recuva to recover all the files on a hard drive that I mistakenly deleted.  I restored all the files to another hard drive.  The hard drive that I deleted everything on was my previous Drive C that became corrupted.   I didn't intend to delete everything on it, but I did by mistake.  I reinstalled Windows on a new hard drive.   When I recovered the files to another hard drive, it caused a problem with windows.  All the recovered files and folders have a connection now with the new Drive C.  All the files got restored to the recovery drive, also got copied to the new Drive C.    Also, doing an action on a file in the recovery drive acts also on the same file in Drive C.  For example, if I rename a file in 'My Pictures" folder in the recovery drive, it renames the exact same file in "My Pictures" of Drive C.   If I delete a file in "My Pictures" folder in the recovery drive, it deletes the same file in "My Pictures" of drive C.   From what I can tell, the files actually exist only in drive C but exist in the recovery drive in name only.   If I delete the "My Pictures" folder in the recovery drive, it deletes the "My Pictures" folder in Drive C.  Does anyone know how to fix this?

Edited December 19, 2019 by ednja

[ArchAngle]

I've read about something called a "symbolic link" (symlink) say between a user's documents folder and a folder of the same name on another drive. 

There is also something similar to do with "shell objects" or "shell folders": 

Quote

The My Documents folder on the Desktop as well as the Fonts and the Administrative Tools folders in the Control Panel are examples of shell objects redirected to file-system folders.

So since at least Windows XP the a user has been able to move the location of the Documents folder almost anywhere to free up space on the C:\ drive. But you still access the content using the same C:\ drive system links ie. like a shortcut but you're not redirected to the actual files' new location.  

It sounds as if maybe something along one of these lines has happened here accidentally and what you're doing, because of this folder linking, is actually renaming or trying to delete the actual 'parent' folder.

But which is which now, how it came about and how to fix it is beyond my knowledge.

If you can identify with certainty where the real My Documents folder content is located it would probably be useful. This article may be relevant:-

https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-move-windows-7-personal-folders-my-documents-another-drive.htm

using the "Find Target" option would seem to be the obvious first step. But after that I am not qualified to advise.