Just lost ALL of my Music Files..PLEASE HELP!!!!!!

Hmm, that's really really weird. Sorry I can't help on this, but as a note, the My Music folder strikes me as kinda flaky, eg: once I backed up my HD (I think to reformat) including the My Music folder, but it was empty when I looked at it from the backup. I don't use the My folders anymore.

 

I'd start with a virus check.

 

Open your search, then search for "files or folders". Type in "*.mp3" for mp3s (without the quotation marks).
or "*.wav" if they are wave files etc...
That will tell you if they are still on your computer and where they are.

 

DEpending on what actually happened, you can probably get them back. Start with the search, then look for some recovery software and trey findin gthem by file type that way. Let us know what happens when you reboot.

 

Did you check under the couch cushions?

brad cook

 

If you get them back, don't clean your house anymore.

 

If you have access to another PC, remove the hard drive and install it as the secondary on another PC. Get a copy of Stallar Phoenix FAT & NTFS recovery tool and it will search the drive for deleted files and such (even if the drive does not show up due to format troubles or bad allocation tables and such) I was BLOWN AWAY by the things I was able to recover from a drive that had gone south in a firewire enclosure and couldnt be accessed. Out of about 200 gigs I don't think I lost anything. Had to do a bit of renaming in the end, but if the data is important is a minor issue.

 

in the meantime....

www.rushradio.org

seriously, make a music dedicated partition on your harddisk

 

Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>System Restore

bring the system back to a couple days ago, before you lost the files. Whenever something goes bazerk with my computer, this is what I do, and it usually works.

 

Partitioning is best for protecting archival data- i never put anything on the C drive aside from software programs. An archival partition is is easy and much safer for portecting data. As far as recovery, blisshead has a good idea with recovery software, that is if you can't reset to a past configuration.

 

Oh sorry, sometimes I don't even look who starts them..I just dispense the comments.

Seriously though..look under the couch cushions.

brad cook

 

Not really, if the HD is still accessable and you haven't copied a whole bunch of files to it, there is still a VERY good chance that a file recovery tool will find them for you. Do you know if the HD is using FAT32 or NTFS (I assume it's not plain old FAT or Mac's various HFS formats, Unix variations or other oddballs...) There are some shareware tools for FAT32, but NTFS is harder to find something that's free that will work.

 

But this only works for recovering the system or a program from registry damages. If your files are still in your HD and they're just "hidden" for any weird reason, maybe system restore will help. But if they were swept from the HD, SR won't work. It doesn't recover "actual" files. Just fixes registry damages by taking the system back to a date when everything was OK.

Anyway, after an HD crash I had some years ago I realized the importance of backing up. I started by burning onto CDs, but that's a hassle. The best solution for me was adding another drive to my system which I only have as a mirror of three partitions from four that my first HD has. The only one that I haven't mirrored is the Windows partition. I think that after Windows has a big failure, the only real solution is formatting the partition and reinstalling from scratch. Of course, I don't store my valued data in that partition. That's what the other three are for. How do I keep a mirror copy of these partitions in the second drive? Second Copy is the answer for me. Great backup software. You can "set it and forget it". On each reboot, the software will update the original partition's content and make the necessary changes. Not only adds files. Also deletes all the stuff you got rid of. Not the solution you're looking for right now, but for avoiding future headaches I highly recommend you to try it (shareware).

 

I've been in such situations before...once by a virus - killed windows a few times, before I realizedf that it triggered soemthing on the 2nd boot of windows.

Anyways, try some recovery software I guess...good luck man.

 

If I'm trying to recover files from a Windows-crashed computer by using the crashed HD as a secondary drive with my working computer, does it matter if the original drive had a Windows password that I don't remember?

 

No, becuase you aren't trying to boot to that install of Windows, assuming there is no strange pasword protected system running on the drive level (this is typical only in VERY highly sensitive situations, never at home...) The only thing to keep in mind is that some OS's (Win95/98,etc) can't access NTFS formats that can be used by WinNT/XP, so if you had NT or XP and were using NTFS as a drive format, if you plug it in as a secondary in a Win 98 PC it will not show up as a drive even tho nothing is wrong with it. Win98 just can't understand it.