cgsecurity.org

I am trying to find the most efficient way to recover a mixture of files that disappeared from a largely empty 2TB eSATA data disk when I ran updates on an installation of Win10. I don't plan on migrating to Win10 until later this year as support for Win7 ends.

I failed to disconnect the drive before I ran the updates. I know the update process used the data drive because it created a new directory or folder and installed 2 files or folders in it. The information below was found by using ZTreeWin's CTRL-Insert tool.

F:\Windows10Upgrade\17134.112.180619-1212.rs4_release_svc_refresh_CLIENTCONSUMER_RET_x64FRE_en-us.esd 1,239,060K

17134.112.180619-1212.rs4_release_svc_refresh_CLIENTCONSUMER_RET_x64FRE_en-us.esd 1268797,440 .a.. 1-25-19 17:52:54

and

F:\Windows10Upgrade\products.xml

products.xml 2,666,817 .a.. 1-25-19 17:38:52

When the updates were successfully installed I returned to my Win7/Pro x64 OS SSD and booted. If the data disk was not running and recognized, Win7 loaded and ran fine. If I then started and found the data disk my Win7 session locked up. When I started the data drive and booted to Win7 the OS ran CHKDSK and 'insisted' on fixing things. When this was done most of the files saved after early March 2017 were no longer found by ZTreeWin in a show-all display of the directory in which I'd been saving data.

I posted a copy of the CHKDSK log on sevenforums and a guru replied, "Your drive had a lot of logical errors that were fixed. No bad sectors." Mini Tool Partition Wizard Surface Test found no read errors, confirming that the disk is mechanically sound.

Can I learn anything by running TestDisk on this data disk?

If I can't, should I be able to recover files (without their original file names) by using PhotoRec?

Thanks
baumgrenze

You can try TestDisk, Advanced, Undelete and if your files aren't found, use PhotoRec on the free space of the partition.
As written previsouly, be careful to not store the recovered files on the source partition.