My C drive kept getting full, so a friend ran Advanced SystemCare v9 trial version from the internet, asking it to clean and to remove duplicates. Immediately afterwards I discovered that many folders of photos and videos have been totally emptied. The same friend ran Pandora Recovery and it only recovered a small handful of files, not the thousands that have gone missing. I have backup for most of them except one file that I had intensively worked on over the last 2 weeks. Completely empty. The folder is still there but empty. The folders next to this one in the menu seem to be fine (if they have lost some content I cannot know, but they are not emptied). The missing JPEGs and videos are all from D drive. There's a photo with a sample of what is missing in one area.
I had AVG antivirus which claimed my computer was clean. After all the files went missing I uninstalled that and loaded the latest BitDefender Total Security and that too says my computer is clean.
I've just found a whole lot more photo folders totally emptied and they all say that were last modified at the time and on the date that ASC was running. A lot had not been touched recently so it is not just recent folders that have been emptied. The "last modified" times are each a minute or two apart during the time that ASC was running.
I feel sick! My friend keeps trying to blame a virus, but I say that the fact that all the emptied folders were last modified during the hours that ASC was running is more than suspicious.
I can get the photos back from backup or the camera memory cards but all the editing and naming will be gone.
Please HELP!!