Ok, so somehow a folder with about 50 files (txt, sound and pdf) disappeared. I tried using windows search, but it's complete rubbish. After a long while of trial and error, manual search and what not, I made a test file in some remote folder for it to find. And to my amazement it couldn't find it even when I searched that folder explicitly. I don't know how Microsoft continues to ship a product like that.
Anyway, a third party app (locate32) I installed could find that test file in an instant, but the speed of it worries me in terms of search accuracy. I don't know if I can trust the results. I couldn't hear any hard drive activity and so on. So when I couldn't find the files using that application, I was thinking if I could've accidentally deleted the folder. Yes, I thought, that's always a possibility, so I fired up Recuva. It's able to find age old files, but still no luck, and again I don't know if it's accurate enough (but at least one file should probably show up if I managed to delete 50 files). So in a situation with the files not being deleted and not being there at the same time, made me question if the files existed in the first place. But they did, so I'm thinking the tools I use must be substandard. Do you have experience from some other ones?