Off Topic But Could Be Beneficial for You: Hard Drive Recovery

This problem is no one's problem until it happens to you.  And you don't want it to happen to you!  
Redundancy - when you have a file saved in multiple places is a good thing!  The 1 TB Western Digital Hard Drive I use to store all my photos and videos doesn't know where any of my files are!  It says the space is still used, but my folders appear to be empty.  It is like the files slowly disappeared one day. One minute I could see them, 20 minutes later they are gone.
I have gotten a "Windows delayed write failed. Windows was unable to save all the data for the file K:\$Mft."

When I check the properties of the drive it shows the drive is used - 391 GB, with 450 GB free. The blue lights on the front go round and round - they don't stop. I hear the fan running - it doesn't shut off.


So began the quest to recover my files.  I called the Western Digital recommended place and it was a minimum of $700, but could be $2,700!  No Way!  I don't want to dish that out.  So I searched for recovery software.  I found some for $70, and some for $140.  All have a free trial to scan the drive to see what can be recovered.

• Soft Ambulance - the website was down last night, so they didn't get my business $140
  
• Easeus.com - Didn't find any files $70
  
• Recover My Files - found 10,000 files i didn't' need and no preview.  $70
• HDD Recovery Pro - found over 100,000 files that I'm recovering now. $140
  

I don't know for sure if HDD Recovery Pro found everything since it is still copying files, but it did find more.  It cost 2 times more than RecoverMyFiles, but well worth it to me.
 
My problem was not a simple "opps, I deleted a file" or "I shouldn't have formatted the disk."  Still don't know what the problem is, not sure if I'll ever know.

I bought the HP SimpleSave 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive HPBAAD0010HBK-NHSN (Gloss Black).  Easy to back up my files, which I did for my c drive immediately.  My recovered files are being put onto that new drive, too.

I turned my drive off for a few days to stop any more deterioration that might be happening.   It's been running 24 hours now to scan & recover data and so far, so good.  I was hoping the files would magically show up again on the drive, but no such luck.  In fact at times I can't even see the folders!

Moral of my story:  Back up files.  Not just in one place, in at least 2 places.  Cloud computing is a good place for redundancy, too!