Files Missing, but space occupied: help needed (urgently)

[samyg]

Hi, everybody.
I'm having a very strange problem on my Toshiba Satellite c650 laptop, which has a Toshiba MK3265GSX 320GB HDD, 4 GB RAM, core i3 processor. I am going to describe it in some detail, so plz bear with me.
I had been running Ubuntu 10.10 x64 linux for some time without problems. Then i had to dual boot windows 7 (ultimate, x64) with ubuntu.
Now, i have a 242 GB NTFS partition called "Storage" (drive D under win 7), on which 42.5 GB was unused, which i use commonly in win and linux. on this drive i had my "Downloads" folder, containing about 60GB of my stuff. There were three sub folders in it: "Chrome", "Direct DLs", and "uTorrent". Suddenly, a few days back, everything in this folder vanished without a trace. All that is left in my "Downloads" folder is an empty "uTorrent" folder: no other files or folders at all. The properties of the Downloads folder show size as 0kb. But the drive still shows 42.5 GB remaining. This makes me think the data might still be there. I tried two recovery softwares named Recuva and TestDisk - both failed.
I have not written anything to that partition after this occured. Is there any way in which i can get back my files and folders? I had some important files in there, along with some movies, etc. don't care about the movies much, but it would be really great if i could get my files back.
I hope one of the geniuses of the community can help me.
Suggestions, please?
Thanks.
-samyg

[harddrivespecialist]

I tried two recovery softwares named Recuva and TestDisk - both failed.

What exactly has happened? How did it fail? Could not read the drive or could not find any files?

[einstein9]

Hi, everybody.
I'm having a very strange problem on my Toshiba Satellite c650 laptop, which has a Toshiba MK3265GSX 320GB HDD, 4 GB RAM, core i3 processor. I am going to describe it in some detail, so plz bear with me.
I had been running Ubuntu 10.10 x64 linux for some time without problems. Then i had to dual boot windows 7 (ultimate, x64) with ubuntu.
Now, i have a 242 GB NTFS partition called "Storage" (drive D under win 7), on which 42.5 GB was unused, which i use commonly in win and linux. on this drive i had my "Downloads" folder, containing about 60GB of my stuff. There were three sub folders in it: "Chrome", "Direct DLs", and "uTorrent". Suddenly, a few days back, everything in this folder vanished without a trace. All that is left in my "Downloads" folder is an empty "uTorrent" folder: no other files or folders at all. The properties of the Downloads folder show size as 0kb. But the drive still shows 42.5 GB remaining. This makes me think the data might still be there. I tried two recovery softwares named Recuva and TestDisk - both failed.
I have not written anything to that partition after this occured. Is there any way in which i can get back my files and folders? I had some important files in there, along with some movies, etc. don't care about the movies much, but it would be really great if i could get my files back.
I hope one of the geniuses of the community can help me.
Suggestions, please?
Thanks.
-samyg

i think this is some sort of virus

try to run the attrib from command prompt and see if there are Sys. Hidden folders which i suspect the virus did

good luck

[samyg]

Thanks for the replies.
I just found out how stupid i am.. I found the files just by doing a simple search: they had somehow shifted to another folder. I gguess there is some kind of virus.. Will scan everything today.
Anyways, problem solved, thanks a lot to u guys.
-samyg