Cut and Paste gone horribly wrong

[jjbbooyy]

Hello,

Any help on this is greatly appreciated. Basically, I'm running Vista and have two external hard drives, a 500gb Western Digital, and a 2tb Lacie which I just purchased. I use both at the moment, but I'm beginning the process of transferring my files bit by bit from the old drive to the new, since I don't need both, and the one folder I decided to start on was with My Pictures, which I've designated last year to be on the WD drive. On that folder are dozens of more folders with thousands of files totaling around 50-60 gigs, and I tried to cut the entire folder and paste it directly to the new drive.

I check back on the computer in an hour and the operation stopped short, I noticed that all of the folders on the old drive are still there, and only 10 or so folders are on the new drive, but none of the files. I looked at the old folders but couldn't open any of the pictures, which seemed to still be there (my old drive has been unresponsive lately, and it's virtually filled up, why I'm transferring now), so I turned the drive off and back on again, and now the folders are still on the old drive, but none of the files. The entire Pictures folder says 0 bytes, as well as the empty subfolders. But the drive is still full, so I'm thinking (and hoping) that the actual photos/videos are still there somewhere.

It is a compilation of the last 13 months of my life, losing that data would cause quite a bit of mental distress. I know I didn't proceed in the best way, but if anyone can help, or if I need to provide some more info, feel free to let me know.

Thanks
Jason
ps: running a dual core 2.8 ghtz with vista, 3 gigs of ram (Dell Dimension 9100 thats been upgraded a number of times)

[Apollo_0]

Hi jjbbooyy, I have seen this happen a few times with Vista.

Have you tried running scan disk on the storage drive containing your original files?
You could have a corrupted the NTFS data streams that are controlled by 'Distributed Link Tracking Client', this services Maintains links between NTFS files within a computer or across computers in a network, your USB child device would be treat as so. (assuming it's formatted NTFS not FAT32)

If scan disk fails, as work around try to connect the Ext USB drive to an XP OS workstation / Laptop, you must ensure though that you have run scan disk before disconnecting the USB drive.

Hope this helps.

[Apollo_0]

A suggestion for the future when copying files in Vista, try using this command line:

xcopy /y [path]\[filename] [drive letter:\folder name]

To copy all of the files in a folder use *.* instead of filename.

The "/y" switch will replace existing files without a confirmation prompt.

(/y stops you having to babysit Vista when copying files, strange considering its meant to be an intelligent OS :p)

I'm Certifiable, not cert-ified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a text book.