All Audio and Video Files Deleted

[SteveP55419]

I was pre-transcoding video files ( around 65 in queue ), each around 3GB give or take, and, while the pre-transcoding was ongoing, I tried to view a video on the Panasonic TV and I noticed that some folders, which previously contained files, were now empty and I thought that it was some Mezzmo glitch. But when I came up to look at the computer, and to my horror, there was a system message saying that some files on the drive where I keep the video files were corrupt. So I rebooted the computer and, upon Windows Vista startup, chkdsk started up and set about deleting all of the files on that drive, each and every mother's son of them. Now all of the data is gone, the drive is completely empty save for two empty folders that managed to somehow persist after all that. The folder containing the pre-transcode files (I think the extension is MZT or something like that) was on the same drive as the actual video files and it too is gone.

I have a backup of everything ( fingers crossed ) so the damage is limited to the hassle this is going to be and I'm not in aggression mode here because I know things happen. But I'm wondering what this is all about. I did a little googling and found nothing that relates specifically to Mezzmo itself. The drive is reported to be healthy by Windows. The one thing I did see in my googling was an MS article that went on about how a drive can be corrupted with the same chkdsk message ( 'deleting orphan file record segment' ) if too many files are created too fast.

Thanks for any ideas. I'd be especially happy if some genius out there knows how to recover the binary files somehow because I'm in fright mode and I don't want to mount the backup drive for fear of seeing another message.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to one and all.

[Paul]

We have not had any reports of file corruption or hard disk corruption from Mezzmo users over the years so I think your problem will have been caused by another program or hardware fault. I'd definitely do a full deep scan of your computer with an up-to-date virus & malware checker.

For file recovery tools, I cannot recommend any, but there are plenty on the web to try - e.g. http://lifehacker.com/5237503/five-best-free-data-recovery-tools

Good luck with it!

[SteveP55419]

It was a HD crash. Thanks for the response though. I should have tested it before I posted but I as all in a tizzy. Nothing caused by Mezzmo.

[Paul]

OK - thanks for posting back that Mezzmo was not the cause.

[SteveP55419]

It turns out that my daughter turned off my external HD while it was busy transcoding to a folder on that drive (she was trying to sleep and didn't like the blinking blue light). From what I've learned, if you cut the power to a HD while it is writing data, expect the drive to die. Mine did.