Whole folder of movies disappeared

[fotoflex]

I tried to move a film into a folder.
So I clicked 'cut' in the original folder and then I touched the folder named 'films' on my external hard disk,
just to make sure I wasn't trying to put the movie into two folders at the same time.
The folder then disappeared.
A minute or so later, I saw a pop-up; 'Ubuntu has experienced an internal error.'.
And the folder did not come back, either.
I tried Disk-utility to scan the disc and see if the folder had been moved, inside another folder maybe,
but nothing to be seen.
'Search' showed nothing either.
All the movies were Super 8's, which I had digitized over the last few weeks.
They can't go through the projector again, I was lucky I got as far as I did.
So this means a great loss.
I know the files must be still on the hard disk, and I would be able to retrieve them under Windows,
but how do I go about getting them back running Linux???
Any advice on how to do this would be really appreciated.

[theDaveTheRave]

fotoflex,

sounds like you need a copy of photorec, this is in fact what it was originally developed for, but it has become a general file recovery tool.

good luck.

David.

[Impavidus]

+1 to photorec (although I never had to use it myself).

Next time you have to move a file from one drive (or partition) to another, first copy the file (copy-paste or using terminal commands), verify it has been written to the other drive and only then remove it from the first. This is much safer, as you won't lose the file in case your file manager crashes during the operation.

[fotoflex]

Thanks both, I will look into Photorec.
Just to make sure, I didn't lose the file I was trying to move (in fact copy, just as you describe),
I lost the entire folder I wanted to copy to.
No way of avoiding that, except keeping back-ups and back-ups of back-ups.
But they are very large files, to do editing on.
The smaller results I would have backed up, twice even,
but this 'internal error' was a nasty surprise.

[SeijiSensei]

but this 'internal error' was a nasty surprise.

And a very uncommon one, too. I'd suspect the disk drive myself. After you are finished with photorec, run fsck against the partition you were trying to write to. You might run smartmontools as well.

[buzzingrobot]

That internal error doesn't sound promising, but, just to be sure, does an "ls -a" in the next-directory up, in both folders, show the folder/files are gone?

[fotoflex]

Thanks again.

'an "ls -a" in the next-directory up', doesn't mean anything to me.
I've tried search, with the names I used for the files.

As for PhotoRec, I've downloaded 6.13 first, and then 6.14, but both give this pop-up when I click exe.
Exe is Windows, and I ran Windows programs with Wine before, but don't get the option here????

P.S.
I thought a screenshot from DiskUtility might be helpful,
but experienced another 'Internal Error', while making one.
After that I tried to copy the Details from the rapport, but can't.
So I made 2 screenshots of that, too.

So, 5 screens;
one from the pop-up,
one from where I downloaded what,
One from DiskUtility,
and two from the InternalError.

[sandyd]

sounds like https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...y/+bug/1198508

[buzzingrobot]

Thanks again.

'an "ls -a" in the next-directory up', doesn't mean anything to me.
I've tried search, with the names I used for the files.

Open a Terminal window. Navigate to the folder that contained the folder that held the missing files. For example, if the missing files were in "/media/elements/download/MyFiles", enter "cd /media/elements/download" in the Terminal windows and hit Enter. Then, do "ls -a" in the Terminal window. "ls" is the command that lists the contents of a folder. If it shows that the "MyFiles" folder exists, try a "cd MyFiles" followed by an "ls -a" to see if any files are found.

[dannyboy79]

is your external hard disk still mounted?