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So yesterday i spent time dumping all my files onto my external hard drive over 45 gigs of pictures and document. Then i deleted them off my laptop in hopes that it would help it perform better.

The today when i needed to access a picture file i plugged in my external hard drive. I looked for the picture but there was no pictures anywhere on my external drive. Double checked my laptop drive and no pictures. All my pictures were gone! I freaked out!

Come to find out the external drive was set to synch every time it was plugged in and 'replace' all folders on the external drive with the folders on my laptop. Bad thing all my folders on the laptop were empty so it replaced all the folders on the external drive with the empty ones.

I was uber close to breaking down and crying... all my pictures, birth pictures, all the girls birthdays or the dedication or our wedding pictures, everything.... gone!

Luckily i calmed down and figured out that i could restore files... that the external kept old files in a dormant location for a certain amount of time before deleting them forever. So i was able to go in and select the files i wanted to restore. Took well over 3000 mouse clicks to select everything (and no i could drag a selection of the files, i had to click every one of them!)

So now i have all my files back. I'm copying them back onto the external. I changed the settings of the external so it will no long automatically copy and replace. Then after all the files are back on the external i will delete them off the laptop again. What a mess!

It's taking forever but at least i have my pictures and files again. So scary!