Tons of images gone..Help

[g-money]

Guys not sure what the hell I have done but need some advice. A while back I bought a external harddrive to back up pics on. Set up the drive, downloaded sync toy from Microsoft and do a back up every couple weeks depending on how much shooting I have been doing.

Well a week or so ago my Computer HD was nearing capacity so I decide to delete a bunch of folders on my computers HD that contained pictures. Before I did I hooked up the external and seen the folder had been backed up so felt safe in deleting them off my computer.

Tonight I need a couple of those pics went to the external HD found the folders but not a single image in them. The only folders that have images are the ones I still have on my computer. I there was a folder that I deleted it deleted the pics off the external hard drive as well it appears.

What did I do wrong and there anyway to recover these pics. I thought if I backed them up externally I could delete them off my computer bacause they were now stored elewhere obviously I am wrong.

Suggestions, I am really bummed So many pics of my kids etc

Greg

[cosworth]

Sync it the key word. You delete the files, it deletes the files on the sync drive.

What OS are you running? There are a couple NTFS undelete programs out there that work well such as UnDelete Plus.

[g-money]

I am running XP

[eddarr]

As long as the hard drives have not written over the space where the pictures where they will still be there. Use Undelete plus or similar to retrieve.

[Steve Beck]

Yep sync does that. it mirrors the drives. So whatever you add or delete on happens tot he other. Hope the space hasnt been 0'd and 1'd. Here:

http://www.runtime.org

[Lowner]

Greg,

In future why not just just let the external hard drive do its own thing. Then you can copy or move files to and fro without any problems.

I have no fancy programmes for this, Bill Gates has provided everything to do the job.

I'd get it off the "Sync" setting ASAP. I don't let the PC make any decisions on these things.

Richard

[kevin_c]

A bit late I know, but always use the 'Contribute' option for this sort of thing, that way you don't delete the old files on the back-up drive when you deleted them from the main drive.

[ajayclicks]

Agree with Kevin. I use the contribute function as well on sync toy. replicates additions/renaming etc, but doesnt delete anything from the external

[g-money]

Thanks All, Appreciate it. I willchange this in Sync or do away with it all together. I am currently running a scan and it looks promising as it says it has recovered nearly 800 files. I am using the Recover My Files download but have yet to pay them for it. Wanted to see if anything could be recovered. Anyone used this before?

I keep all pics on a seperate drive within my computer so what I may do is scan both my external and internal drives and hopfully can get most back. Thanks again for the input. This will never happen again. Man, think you have everything covered in back up and then find out you have been screwing up all along. Live and learn

Greg