Dumb, but here goes: I thought I was copying files from my external hard drive (that I use for everything) to the hard drive on my computer to back up the external hard drive. When I realized that I was moving instead of copying, I stopped, changed to "copy" and proceeded. THEN I deleted my other back-up files of the external hard drive that were on my computer hard drive. THEN I found out that the moved files were deleted from BOTH C and external hard drive. I copied easeus to C and tried to recover from external hard drive. (the folder was so large that it did not go to the recycle bin but was deleted without using the bin). I was unable to recover the folder/zillion subfolders and most important sub-sub folder. I can't go to "system restore" because I am not sure at what point I was copying/moving and system restore only shows me trying to install a new printer (within the same four hours) and there is no record of moving files. I don't even know if I should be trying to recover from C or the external hard drive, since the folders were on both drives within an hour of each other, but no longer exist on either drive.

mmm - seems to be the current event? Have a look at this post; and follow the references (and there is one to another post here too); as they will point you to possible solutions - suitable utilities to that end. http://www.computing.net/answers/wi... Do NOT write/save anything further to the drive where you "lost" the files; as the more you do (write/save etc.) the less your chances of compelete recovery of what is presently "lost..."

Thanks - I'll try these, but am going to buy an additional external drive on which to copy one of the other recover program. Since I was unable to recover from the external hard drive with Easeus, I need to try to recover from the C drive, but don't want to add another program to the C drive (I already added Easeus, which as you noted lessens my chances of recovering a huge folder that contains my life.

You "could" clone/copy the HD in question to an external drive; then run the recovery util from the HD's desktop/laptop and address/search the external drive for files? I think... but not sure ... that you may be able to run some utils without installing them fully; but wise to check/verify this first? If you have to install sed util to the HD in question - perhaps use yet another system and install util(s) there. Then slave HD in question to that system (or via a usb adapter) and seach/recover that way...

Try using this utility. http://www.recuva.com/

My thanks to all of you. I will try all of the suggestions!