I deleted some folders from desktop and can not find.

I am sure a common question but really need some help.

I do not remember this happening but a few days ago I put 2 folders on my desk top and must have deleted them and then sent to recycle bin and deleted from there I am very good at not doing that and again do not remember doing that. I searched everywhere. I do not have any money so I downloaded a free file recovery software "Pandora recovery".

In the folders that where deleted one was about 100 saved website links, the other one was about 15 word docs.

I searched in the Pandora file recovery software for the names of the folders and can not find, I searched names of the word docs in the folder and can not find, I did find other stuff I deleted years ago. It doesnt look like my files are anywhwere in the deleted section.

Does anyone have any suggestions on where the folders might be? When you delete folders does the contents get spread out so I can search for the files in the folder by name?

Thanks Steve

Hi,
When you delete files they are still where you left them, windows just changes information in the listing so that they disappear from any normal view. If you start saving other files, they can be written over the old deleted files making the old files un-recoverable.
If you have deleted the files from the desk top and from the recycle bin, they should be able to be found unless you have saved information over them (you do not control where windows writes info on your hard drive).
Try downloading another program to locate deleted files (there are heaps of free ones on the net) and see if they can find them, if not I would say they are gone forever, sorry, well at least, I have no idea how to recover them.

The morale of the story -- always make backups of inportant files. Your computer has floppy and CD RW drives for a purpose -- use them.

No floppy does not work, No CD Rw disk on computer, older e-machine unit. You cant give better relative information then that Ancient Dragon?

You cann't recover them. I know so far, there is no software to recover them. If you do not any work after delete as like bob said then you can recover it. now you cann't recover it.

hi ,try this recover program ,worked for me
http://www.recuva.com/

Hi,
A thumb drive is the cheapest way around your backup problem, you could get all your word docs easily on a 1 gig stick.
Caperjack has recommended a recovery program that is very good but if that will not find them, try others free from the net. If after 3 attempts you are still unsuccessful, I would say you have lost them forever.

Thanks guys for the feedback. I tried Pandora and found nothing. I am using Recuva and found nothing yet but still searching.

But here is the odd thing, in the Recuva search I found almost every file I deleted in the past 5 years or so and most say 100% written and unrecoverable but it still shows the file names and last modified but I can not find one single file that I am looking for from the folders I supposedly deleted 5 days ago, almost like I never deleted it, but I still can not find on my computer, could it be hidden somewhere?

thanks

If you think that the folders may still be on your desktop, but hidden, go start, run, and enter:
cmd
In the cmd window enter in sequence:
cd desktop
dir /a/s

A file finder which I can recommend is REST2514.EXE
-use another machine to dl it to a thumb or floppy, and then run it from that. That way you reduce the risk of overwriting deleted files. Finds files you did a Shift+del job on, also.

Giving that ,is it possible you dreamed you actuall had the folders on the desktop !lol
just kidding ,but if you don't remember deleting how can you say you then emptied the recycle bin! if 2 programs don't find them in recycle bin but fine file reference to the last 5 years its possible you didn't actually delete these folders to the bin ! so where are they ,not sure ,do you have more that one user ,like 2 and the files were saved on the other users desktop !nut i know
check this path to have a look, C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop