Restore found.000 files to their original location in Windows 10

I have an external disk which has received some power cuts due to power failures in the office and not having power backup.

The disk for now works correctly but I have noticed that there are some files with 0 bytes and other files which have been "lost".

Reviewing the hidden files of the system I see that in the root of the disk there are several hidden directories with the nomenclature found.000, found.001 ... etc and inside each directory, several directories called dir0000.chk.

Within these directories there are many of the files that I could not find, check them because there are videos etc. and they do not seem to have problems.

I already did a check to the disk and it did not show errors, although when there were cuts it did report errors and a message requesting repair.

In short, I would like to know how to restore those files inside the dir0000.chk directories to their original locations (there are a lot of files and in many cases I don't remember where they were) and if It is possible to know how to restore files with 0 bytes.

Solution 1:

You could try disk scavenger/recovery software, but I wouldn't hold high hopes.

When you use chkdsk to repair the file system, that's what it does - it repairs the file system. It doesn't care what files it has to sacrifice to achieve that. If it finds stray sectors it thinks should have been parts of files, it shuffles them to one side & numbers them sequentially. The chances of untangling that back into actual files is slim to none.

You will probably need to get those files back from your backup.

Test the drive to see if SMART is still good & that these power-cuts have not further damaged the drive itself. If you're uncertain, replace it.