Loss of files after mounting windows partition

[Lakshmigopal]

I reinstalled Ubuntu day before yesterday, I used it all day yesterday, starting with back links to my windows partition. The latter is in /dev/sda3, so I started to mount manually: sudo mount /dev/sda3 /media/Seven. Then I edited /etc/fstab by adding:

/dev/sda3    /media/Seven    ntfs    default    0    0

this morning, I raise Ubuntu to work and I realize that half of my folders that I had a link is missing. In Documents, I lost 3/4 of my files and my subfolders. Needless to say I had stored a lot of work and I did not copy everything. I rebooted Windows and indeed those files are gone, no longer impossible to find them with software to retrieve files and folders lost. Has anyone had this problem? If yes, is it solvable?

[Enriqueta]

Why don't you just move these directories either to another windows directory or somewhere on your Linux partition? And you were also talking about links? How have you done that, in principle, it is rare that the operating system turns the files or folders without the user to do something. Moreover, it is very dangerous to handle these files on partitions having two operating system installed, you must better have a partition or share rights will not be a problem for fat 32 users, and if it is NTFS it should not manage the rights for you can believe that when you copy the operating system because it has refused the rights.

[Lakshmigopal]

This is not possible, I have some folders that are always present but most sub-folders does no longer exist. I do not really see what could happen. Yes indeed I make connections, and these files were damaged (my download folder has disappeared, my Documents folder has been partially emptied).
ln -s /media/Seven/Users/username/Documents/ ./Documents
ln -s /media/Seven/Users/username/Documents/Downloads ./Downloads

Usually I have no worries, it's the first time that I did that and now I'm afraid that every time you start it again. I wondered if this could come from the configuration of my fstab, because I remembered that the type was set to be but not ntfs and ntfs-3g. In terms of partitions, I do not think the Windows Rights are taken into account by Linux, but I could be wrong. I have the impression that editing fstab can mess up everything. In any case my files were indeed missing, no trace and no chance of finding them I think.

[Enriqueta]

"ln" creates a link, but does not copies anything. If I made a link with "ln" in it, it allows me to go back to file x and then see but there is nothing in x if it is a file which it says will see. Why you have saved in ./Documents is of no use. Make sure you have the correct symbolic links. If you have not formatted your drive then you can definitely get the files again. But if you have done that then you are in big trouble. There may be possibility of retrieving lost data from your drive with some recovery software but there is no guarantee of the data that you get. The data will be as it is but we are not sure if you will have all the data.

[Lakshmigopal]

Yes, I can see the functioning of symbolic links. The problem is that I lost my Documents folder of my mount point /media/Seven (ie my windows partition). The ./Documents is because I was in my home when I entered the command. I tried a search of records, it did not work. With System Restore point I managed to recover some files using the backup files from earlier versions (thanks to Windows 7), but inevitably my folder "computer" was crushed because I worked on it in Ubuntu and can not find previous version. I think it's dead, I suspect my ntfs instead of ntfs-3g to be the cause. Fortunately my most important sources were in Java, I can recover them with a shot jad but it will take time