Question : Problem: Can I recover my data?

OK, This is a doozy but I'm really hoping that someone can help with this. For some reason I think it may be an "easy fix" but I'm not sure. Let me give you a little background. I have two HDD's in my computer. One for the OS (70GB Raptor) and one for all of my data (500GB). On my data drive I have a folder called Documents (Used to be My Documents before Vista) and inside that folder I stored most all of my data, my music (folder), my pictures (folder), various and sundry other individual files and floders such as all of my pst files, quicken files, etc. Three nights ago I installed Vista Ultimate. After installing Vista I changed the default location of the documents folder to point to D:\My Documents. I changed the default location of the Music folder to what was then D:\"Documents"\My Music (Vista "renamed" My Documents to just Documents) and the Pictures folder I changed to point to D:\Documents\My Pictures. Each time I did this Vista prompted me to move the contents of the current folder to the new location to avoid having two Documents folders, music folders, etc, show up in Windows Explorer. I said ok and the only file it prompted to overwrite was some .ini file so I said yes and that was that.

I believed that all was ok thus far because I changed my desktop wallpaper by clicking on the Start\Pictures button and going to my wallpaper folder and selecting another wallpaper. Now here's where it gets scary. I downloaded and installed SP1 and didn't think anything of it. Sometime after installing SP1 I did the same thing to the Downloads folder, I changed the Default Location to D:\Downloads, accepted the prompt to copy/move any files to the new location. I can't remember if it asked about copying the .ini file or not. Well, shortly there after I needed to get a file from the Documents folder. I opened the documents folder and ALL of my files were GONE! The folders were still there but they were empty. Once I got over the chilling sickly upheaval in my stomach I clicked on the Music folder - same thing - all of my mp3's were gone. The folders were still there but empty, same thing with the pictures folder. Now here's the rub. The downloads folder that I changed was fine. Everything was as it was before, and all of my other files and folders that are stored on my D: drive are fine. The Music and Pictures file were both inside of the Documents folder. So I am at a loss. I have not used any type of Data Recovery Software yet nor have I stored anything else on the drive. I have since reformatted my C:\ Drive and reinstalled XP Pro. What I am really thinking here is that maybe somehow the Master File Table or File Allocation Table or whatever on the D: Drive got screwed up when I installed SP1 or whatnot (Well, It had to be the installation of SP1 because as I said I was able to access the pictures folder before I installed it and the Downloads folder after I installed it and changed the location) and that somehow it can be fixed, or edited, or SOMETHING either by hand or through the use of a particular program or something or other. I haven't ran Chkdsk on the D: Drive for fear of making the situation worse. I just KNOW that the data is still there I just can't see it. And why would it get rid of the files yet leave the folders in place? In Every folder all of the sub-folders are in tact but devoid of data. PLEASE HELP

Answer : Problem: Can I recover my data?

Found it. Prog is testdisk (on MiniPE and downloadable elsewhere). Run testdisk, select the following options - log option (none) - proceed - intel - Advanced - boot - then right arrow to repair MFT. This copies the mirror to MFT. If this was the issue now it is fixed. I guess at this point it can't make matters much worse.

Good luck

Chris B