Directory disappeared while renaming

Question

I was just renaming a directory on my desktop using standard GUI procedure and it disappeared. I checked the usual things like recycle bin, hidden file settings, system file hiding and so on but it's still not there. I also can't find it using cmd.

Directory's previous name was microcontrollers and I changer it to Propeller, so there shouldn't be any legal characters and so on.

In the directory I had several PDF files, if that matters. So what should I do? Currently my available options are to attempt to access the disk from another windows installation of to try to access it using ntfs-3g from GNU/Linux, but I'm afraid that I'll do something to make things even worse.

Answer 1

The first thing that comes to mind is a file system error. Try running chkdsk to see if it finds anything wrong.

chkdsk /F C:

You should get this message:

Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process.  Would you like to schedule this volume to be
checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)

It will run the next time you reboot your computer and fix any filesystem errors.

Note: If your main hard drive is not C:, change it accordingly.