Thanks for making that post (about not putting anything new on the drive) in the nick of time!! I'd just been wondering what would happen if I added a folder, with a name that would fall (alphabetically) into the lost files. You stopped me just in time...

The Glary utilities recovery tool did recover some files, but they were all files I'd deleted, not the missing folders

I appreciate the suggestion...that's actually why I came to the chipboard with the problem . I know there's places/sites out there that can do stuff...I just don't know who's legit and who might be a scam. I was confident that chippers would come up with at least one safe site for me to try .