External hard disk data erased by windows & moved to new folder called found 000 on it.

Hello,
I got this problem last night.
Windows XP prompted me that i have some corrupt files on my external usb hard disk & to perform check disk utility.
I ignored the message & worked on this hard disk & when due to some reason i restarted my machine at this time the windows automatically started scanning my external hdd.
One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You
may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended
that you continue.
Windows will now check the disk.
\Documents and Settings\Aphrophyre\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\07g7405y.Aphrophyre\localstore.rdf first allocation unit is not valid. The entry will be truncated.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 18880 corrected.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 18904 corrected.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 18957 corrected.
Bad links in lost chain at cluster 19242 corrected.
.
.
.
.

It was deleting some index thing & I can see it was going through each & every file & folded presented in my external hdd.
Now when it launched the desktop I noticed in my external hard disk that many files are removed from there original place & moved to a hidden folder known as found0 where there are around 500 sub-folders with all files scattered between all of them. This found folder is about 30gb. Now i don't know if any data is deleted or not IF yes how to recover such data?
I have seagate maxtor 500gb external hdd
Operating system XP pro SP3
I have symantec antivirus software installed.

Please help!

Check your hard disk for errors
Click to open Computer.
Right-click the hard disk drive that you want to check, and then click Properties.
Tools - Error checking - check now
If prompted for administrator password enter the same.
To automatically repair problems with files and folders that the scan
detects, select Automatically fix file system errors. Otherwise, the disk
check will simply report problems but not fix them. To perform a thorough disk check, select Scan for and attempt recovery of
bad sectors. This scan attempts to find and repair physical errors on the
hard disk itself, and it can take much longer to complete.

To check for both file errors and physical errors, select both Automatically
fix file system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.
Start
It will take time depending upon size of your hdd.

I had the same problem. The message kept telling me to do a chkdsk, but
It would not work.
I was told to do a reinstall with the Vista OS CD, but one of the
options on the way to the reinstall was to do a Vista Upgrade which I
did.

It goes through a fairly long process on its own for about an hour.
Then it states that their are corrupt files, so I clicked OK on all of
them and let it proceed.

All of the sudden it did it's own chkdsk and cleaned all the corrupt
files. No files were lost and I am back to normal.

Errr... chk files are files that are created by Scandisk, and I don't believe there is an actual working program to recover them. When Scandisk finds a problem with a file on your hard drive, it turns the data into the .chk file. Pretty stupid way of doing things on Microsoft's part.

I've experienced the same issue with the "found.000", "found.001" etc. directories .
In my case I was missing some pictures and mp3s.
I checked every file in those folders, found my mp3s and pictures, renamed to their original names and moved them to where the belonged.

If your not so lucky though, the files in "found.000" could just be garbage.
So check every file in that folder first before you delete anything.

Some of the .Chk files are recoverable and thats why they are saved by ChkDsk .. There are tools around that will help you recover them .. One of them Uncheck has worked for me once .. You might also wanna try ChkMate
PC Inspector File Recovery worked for me on a flash drive and my found.000 were not even seen just a file marked 00b , the program is free, you will manually have to restore each file but it works, not here for an argumnent only lending my fortune in restoring my files, good luck...

Thanks for your replies but the new thing i found is that the folder is found 000 & not found 0.
The files in every .chk folder are not in sound state since when i tried to open some .mp3 files the songs were messy sometimes i can here 3-4 songs in a single .mp3 file.
Again a .mp3 file is having some different name.
I am totally confused about what to do.
How to recover the data its almost 300gb of data & I dont have another removable hdd with me.
Please help.

I think you should try these programs for recovering your data I hope this will work for you just give it a try.

1. PC Inspector File Recovery

2. Tune-Up utility

I hope this helps you! :)

mijaba you're a life saver...I had no idea how to get those files moved by chkdsk until your post. That was the way I was able to find and move the files and folders to the appropriate folders :thumbup1: