Missing files after switching to new drive for boot

So here is an interesting conundrum I'm curious if anyone can solve.

Back at Xmas time I bought a new SSD, installed into my laptop and cloned my hard drive partition to it. I have been booting from the SSD since by manual changing the BOOT priority to boot from the (F:) drive - SSD

I have been running that drive since, and all new information, files, programs etc have been written to that drive.

Last week I decided to finally wipe the old (C:) since it as been sitting unused for a month, I could use it as storage space.
I used a Linux live cd, and the GParted application to wipe the (C:) and not touching the (F:) which had all the new information on it.

When I rebooted into windows the drive letter of my SSD was changed to (C:) as it was now the only BOOT device located. However a number of my files, applications that I have installed to the drive since I began using it back in January have disappeared.
Nothing was changed, deleted or wiped from this SSD drive, they just seemed to have disappeared.
I have tried unhidding files and also used Recuva to do a scan for any deleted recoverable files. I've also booted back into Linux and tried to search that way. They do not show up anywhere at all.

I'm perplexed, any help recovering these files would be greatly appreciated.

Do they show in add remove are the folders there? It could be they were written to the old c

Samuria said:

Do they show in add remove are the folders there? It could be they were written to the old c

I am certain that they were not written to the HDD as the C: drive
Whenever I accessed the files/folders I would have to go through the F tree. Also while in Linux I double checked the files were indeed stored on the F: drive

spunk said:

After cloning the Old HDD to the new SSD, you should have unplugged the old HDD and made sure the SSD would boot properly without the old HDD attached. At that point, the new SSD would be drive C: and any new programs and files would be saved to that C: drive from this point forward.


You then can plug in your Old HDD and remove it from the Boot order in the Bios, moving the SSD to first boot device and still boot to the SSD and it should still be C:
Since you didn't do that, any new programs you installed were saved to drive C:, Your Old HDD, and written in the Windows registry as such. Hopefully you have a backup.

Its actually not the program files I am worried about I can reinstall programs. I had some file folders that were important. They were indeed on the SSD as I double checked to make sure before I formatted the old HDD. Unfortunately the one file I need to have a back up for was a newly created file and I had forgot to make a back up before carrying on with other work

spunk said:

Boot into Windows on the SSD, in File Explorer go to the Toolbar to the View tab, put a check in the box for Hidden Items and File Name Extensions. And then press the Win key+S and do a Search for a specific file name or extension (ie) search for *.txt. *.mp3 or whatever file extension if you aren't sure of the name.

So I couldn't find them this way, but I was able to find missing files through the files > recent list....however the destination path says
"F:\Program Files"
which would have been the location on the SSD before formating the old HDD, now the SSD has been renamed to C:\
can I simply change the destination path?

When you cloned the HDD to the SSD and booted from the SSD, it WAS the C: drive! Your F: drive at the time was the HDD, not the SSD. When you were saving and using files to/from F: drive, it was the HDD, and when you wiped the HDD, you wiped out those files.

NavyLCDR said:

When you cloned the HDD to the SSD and booted from the SSD, it WAS the C: drive! Your F: drive at the time was the HDD, not the SSD. When you were saving and using files to/from F: drive, it was the HDD, and when you wiped the HDD, you wiped out those files.

no that is incorrect. The F: drive was my Samsung SSD, always listed as such. The drive sizes are also different, so there was a clear distinction as well as a difference in the labelling.