Hi
Over the years I've tried to save all my documents. This means that they have been copied from folder to folder and computer to computer (whatever was before Windows 95) probably mostly through external storage. However, some of these were saved directly to the 2nd internal hard drive D:\ of Windows 8 may be included, but I'm not certain.
I believe all of the folders are present, most of which are identified by date. However, many of the folders are completely empty. I cannot see a pattern as to which folders. This seems to involve mostly older folders, (and this may mean that it is more likely that they have been through a USB device) but not all of the older folders are empty. More recent ones are also empty. Otherwise, I cannot identify any specific documents, only that large numbers of folders are empty.
I doubt it is possible to recover anything but I would like to prevent this from happening in the future.
Any advice or comments will be greatly appreciated.
Files over time may become corrupt either due to system failures or hardware, nobody knows the exact reason why. You may try to use Recuva (Free) to try to restore your files on your hard drive. This will take a while. Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download
Thank you. I use Acronis TrueImage now (in the past Windows and Macrum Reflect) for my C:\drive. But I've always performed initial storage and the 1st backup of documents and other files that I wish to preserve on non C:\ internal drives and then drag, or copy and paste to USB devices and then back and forth to internal drives. Only occasionally have I uses CDs or DVDs.
Do you believe that these programs would create less vulnerable backups? I don't know for sure, but it's my impression the loss occurs later rather than earlier.