Accidently deleted files using FFS

[olly330]

Help
I was lining up some folders to sync to my external hard drive, and wanted to exclude one particular folder from syncing. So, on the left sync panel, I right click the folder I did not want to sync, and then click on the delete thinking that ‘delete’ means removing it from the freefilesync program menu, not removing it altogether from the PC.

And you guessed it, I also clicked the ‘recycle bin’ box, as I thought that by leaving it checked my files would be deleted to my recycle bin, but unchecking it would mean that it just removes from the freefilesync program. I was wrong.

My files have been deleted from the system, and are not in the recycle bin. So I am trying to receiver them now. I am being extremely careful to not allow anything to write to the hard drive now, so nothing gets overwritten, and only recovering files to my external hard drive.

I have tried to recover them via various programs, and I can find most of the files, but some of them are being recovered as damaged….. Also, the folder structure, which took many years of building, is damaged. The files are just being recovered as one big lot, or some folders are correct, most are not, very random.

I don’t understand why this is happening, as I have not removed them from the hard drive, or written anything to the drive, so why have they become damaged.
Could anyone advise how I can bring them back, in totally original order, from the freefilesync delete.

It may be a good idea to just remove the delete button in the program, as people like me who should read the user guide better jump right in and think that it just means delete from the program, not from the whole hard drive. Any help is appreciated.