Have a dodgy cursor occassionally plays up, sometimes it just deletes files or tabs or closes them when it's over them. Usually I'm quite careful to make sure it's not over anything unless going to do something. (getting new laptop soon). Have got round the deleted emails get back from Trash or the closed web tabs by Ctrl T
But today I had a flash drive in looking at a list of old folders with photos in.
I glanced up and it was saying "... Moving. " and the folder disappeared, then it quickly did the next one, before I could move/stop it.
It didn't say deleting it said "moving", where would it have moved the folder to or are they gone
I had look in C drive for recycle bin not there
Pick up your mouse and blow as hard as you can into the underside where the red led is in an attempt to remove the fluff and hairs that are probably there.
Actually just reread your your post and folders deleted from flash drives never appear in the Bin.
I would have a look in other folders on the flash drive and see if the missing folders have been moved to another folder on the flash drive.
Try another known good mouse to stop the problem happening again if blowing away the dust does not work.
Sorry I wasn't clear its the cursor from the pad on laptop not a separate mouse.
Yes i looked at other files on FD not there.
Saw some programs you can down load to recover things from FD.. possibly but they all seemed a bit complicated, and dont know if they were safe to download.
use the undo button next time, been there since Windows 8 iirc.
I would be looking inside the folders on the flash drive, and maybe grab a new mouse...
Can you remember the name/s of the folder/s or any of the files that moved? If so, you might be able to search for them by name. Hopefully you only need to find one to find the rest. It must be very frustrating but does highlight the importance of backups, especially for files on memory sticks.
My goto for recovering files off drives etc is Photorec. wee bit of a learning curve with it though
https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
It is a little bit old school looking, command prompt menus etc, but it generally works well and only fails to recover data if the drive is physically stuffed
Thank you thank you!! SueDonim, I thought I had looked in the other folders, but did search and there the 2 folders are under another folder I hardly ever used.
Im going to do another copy of flash drive.
And thanks to others for links to other programs to use as have previously lost things that don't show up in search but not related to flash drive
Turn off the touch pad and use a mouse.