3 replies to this topic

[zer0nix]

tldr:
os is vista business  
task manager was used to shut down explorer, which for some reason did not automatically restart
began getting an 'i/o error; disk access failure' message from peerblock, which is installed onto c drive
attempted to save a file in notepad++, seemed successful so i saved all of my work, some on c and some on an external hdd.
upon reboot, vista installed an update
all of the files i had saved after explorer was killed became zer0 size files, even the ones on the external hdd ... only the files i had saved were affected
could not find the original files using a file system check, easus data recovery or recuva.
HELP!!!


i'm not sure exactly what happened ...

the last time i used my pc, explorer was acting really slowly, so i called up the task manager and shut down explorer, expecting vista to restart it automatically ... oddly, that did not happen. following that, peerblock began intermittently giving some message about an 'i/o error; disk access failure', which is troubling because it is installed onto c drive ... i started panicking because i'd typed up quite a bit that i hadn't saved and, fearing the worst, i attempted to save a new file in notepad++. it seemed sucessful, so i then continued to save all of my work in progress and rebooted.

upon reboot, vista immediately began installing an update. when that finished, i attempted to resume my work and found that all of the files i had just saved had been overwritten into zero size files. some of these files represented more than a year's worth of work.

a file system check did not restore the files, so i tried easus data recovery and recuva and found that neither were able to locate the previous versions of these files.

is there any program or tool that can restore the files i just lost?

EDIT: hd tune reports 0.0% damaged blocks
 

[EuroFight]

Based on the information you have given, it would seem to me that a disk error occurred that prevented data from being written to the disk. If the data was never written, it would have been cleared when the RAM was cleared upon restart.
Another possibility would be that the data had been overwritten at some point, although this is unlikely. Is this was the case, you may be able to recover the data through 'Previous Versions' under 'Properties'.

[Waco]

In the future...killing explorer is not a good way to fix things. It does sound like the files got wiped out - do you have any backups at all?

[jamesy]

if you cannot access your operating system or even if it is too slow i would recommend borrowing another machine and downloading a free linux based rescue disk called hirens boot cd and burn it to a dvd with imgburn another free programe , when you boot the disk you can load into a utility  called mini xp here you can brows through your hard drive and back up your data to a memory usb stick it is actually not that hard to do ps hirens boot disk has a lot of extras also here are some links

 

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd             ........... boot disk

http://www.imgburn.com/                         .............To burn the disk 

 

plus i think the size is small enough so you might get it on a cd

hope it helps