How to recover a mysteriously deleted folder?

Question

While backing up my data to DVD's Nero suddenly acted a little wierd and it showed like it had burnt and verified my current folder to DVD but it did so in less than a minute (unlike the usual 10 minutes or so)

On checking my DVD it was blank and on checking my folder on the computer it was empty!

Any recovery softwares you recommend to recover folders specifically.

I've already tried Recuva with no results and Rstudio is meant for delete drives/partitions IMO.

Answer 1

Other free utilities you can try are:

DiskDigger

DiskDigger can recover files from any type of media that your computer can read. This includes USB flash drives, memory cards (SD, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, etc), and of course your hard drive. The types of files that it recovers include photos, videos, music, documents, and many other formats.

DiskDigger can even scan reformatted or badly formatted disks (disks to which Windows can’t assign a drive letter), and even disks with bad sectors. It bypasses the Windows file system drivers and scans your disk directly. It has its own built-in support for the following file systems: FAT12 (floppy disks), FAT16 (older memory cards), FAT32 (newer memory cards and hard disks), NTFS (newer hard disks), and exFAT (Microsoft’s new successor to FAT32).

PC INSPECTOR File Recovery 4

PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery 4.x is a data recovery program that supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems.
Here are some of the new features in PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery 4.x
- Finds partitions automatically, even if the boot sector or FAT has been erased or damaged
- Recovers files with the original time and date stamp
- Supports the saving of recovered files on network drives
- Recovers files, even when a header entry is no longer available. Competition products cannot recover such files. The "Special Recovery Function" supports the following file formats: ARJ AVI BMP CDR DOC DXF DBF XLS EXE GIF HLP HTML HTM JPG LZH MID

Answer 2

You should try Restoration.

Restoration is an easy to use and straight forward tool to undelete files that were removed from the recycle bin or directly deleted from within Windows, and we were also able to recover photos from a Flash card that had been formatted. Upon start, you can scan for all files that may be recovered and also limit the results by entering a search term or extension. In addition, it also provides the option to wipe the found files beyond simple recovery.

The program is small (229 KB) and standalone, it does not require installation and can also run from a Floppy disk. Restoration works with FAT and NTFS as well as digital cameras cards.

Restoration does not contain any adware or spyware.

Answer 3

Before trying third-party utilities, try right-clicking the empty folder, choosing Properties, and seeing if there is a Previous Versions tab in the Properties dialog. If the Volume Shadow Copy service is running, you may be able to restore a version of the folder from before the files were deleted.