Ran a defrag program (not the native Windows one) on my backup HD overnight. And somehow it’s screwed the contents. Weird filenames, data just gone. Nearly 40gig of music, roms and backups all gone. The word of the day is “bollocks” 🙂 Good job I don’t really care isn’t it.

It’s not free, but it has saved me on more than one occassion from accidentally deleted or formatted NTFS drives. Restorer2000 might work for you too if you do want to try and recover it.
Thanks Justin – I’ll grab that for next time.
Everything was seriously screwed so I just ran Format – even Disk Check couldn’t start so I suspect a basic table was brokwn along with much more.
It’s only data 🙂
Wow, owch. What software caused that?
If I run a 3rd party defrag its generally O&O Defrag, I’ve found it extremely good.
It was Diskeeper.
To solve the problem, formatted. It went to 100% then said it could not complete. Properties 0 bytes. Tried Quick Format – no dice. Tried another format – instant “could not complete”. Went with detailed error check. Then quick format. Then full format. Drive now declared healthy.
Needless to say, Diskeeper has been erased.
Maybe that’s Microsoft’s way of sticking it to you for trying unbuntu 😀
Isn’t DiskKeeper the one that the MS one is based on? Or is that another one?
Either way: I recomend O&O.
At least it appears it was software that corrupted your data and not your chipset! I’m looking at you nvidia.