disaster!

[liszmaninopin]

I just went to check the pdf file for a piece I was listening to.  Just the other day, I moved all of my pdfs to a single folder, and divided them nicely by composer.  When I went to check for the pdfs, they were gone!  Somehow or another, they've disappeared!  There were over a thousand scores in that folder, some of them quite rare (meaning, I'll probably never find them again).  This is severely frustrating.  However, I post this for your benefit.  If you have a substantial collection of piano related files, make sure you back them up.  I still have no clue what happened, but don't let it happen to yourself.

[pianojems]

I feel terrible for you. That must have been horrible. You know that there is a chance that the filed were just moved somewhere else. Use your search feature on the start menu to see if you could find them. Chances are that if you did not press the delete button you might fing them sometime.
Good Luck

[Daevren]

You might find them somewhere else. Maybe you moved them to some other folder.

Use the search option and look all over your disk for ,pdfs

Maybe you could use a recover program.

Back-ups. Yes. Back up your stuff. And remember that Hard Drives and even CD-Rs don't last forever.

[rlefebvr]

Even if you deleted them by mistake they are still there. Nothing is deleted from your computer until something else is written over it.

Check you computer carefully to make sure they are not misplaced and find somewhere or someone who knows how to retrieve deleted files.

Good luck.

And for God sake, back things up. Get a second HD (they are cheap and back things up there. The chances of two HD's breaking down at the same time is almost non existent.

[liszmaninopin]

Thanks for your suggestions!  I just did what you said, performed a search, and found that somehow all my stuff has been moved to a completely different place by somebody, so I'm good (and feel very relieved, lol).  However, the scare has made me learn my lesson, I'm saving the stuff to a disc.

I'm not much of a computer whiz, but I never knew that hard drives and cds didn't last indefinitely.  How long do they last?  

[Saturn]

I'm not much of a computer whiz, but I never knew that hard drives and cds didn't last indefinitely.  How long do they last?  

Just estimating here:

CDs:  80 years+, assuming good care (no scratches or anything of that sort).

Hard drives:  Anywhere between 3 and 10 years before it starts developing bad sectors, depending on the drive make, care, usage, and general factors like the climate.  The drive will continue to operate for a long time after developing bad sectors, but more bad sectors will start popping up and it'll be necessary to replace the drive.

- Saturn

[Daevren]

Well, CDs aren't CDRs...

I heard some CD-Rs only last about 6 years... I don't know if its true.

[pianojems]

In case you ever delete something by accident in the future, look in the recycling bin. It usually keeps all the files untill you personally delete them. All files in the Recycling bin can be restored by right clicking on them and hit restore.