so it seems there is no solution.
thanks for your time everyone

it may be that I was incorrect on which drive it was booting from, but the speed seemed to be as such that it was the SSD while the SSD was still labeled F:
I had manually changed the boot order to...

I suspect that is probably correct. But doesn't explain the missing documents or document folders that were saved specifically to the SSD

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...