Recuva worked great and found my files that disappeared from a hidden folder. They were not deleted by me, they just disappeared. I was able to get them all back and restored with Recuva but I have a question about where the files are now located. Are the recovered files now ONLY back in the folder I restored them to or is there still the copies hiding some place on my hard drive. I tried using the Secure Overwrite Highlighted and Secure Overwrite Checked options but they were both "Ghosted Out" and would not work.
These files have business and medical information so I do not want them "hiding" on my hard drive. I want to make sure they have been "Securely" removed.
This can only be answered in general terms. Recuva will not modify in any way the deleted files it is recovering, it will copy them from where they were found to whatever recovery folder you have chosen or created. So you have everything you had before plus a new folder with the recovered files in it.
The only way I know that the secure overwrite options are disabled is if the files are not deleted, i.e. you have selected Scan for Non-Deleted Files and are trying to overwrite a live file.
After your recovery is completed (and you have a backup....) you could run a CCleaner clean and then a one-pass Wipe Free Space using CC Drive Wiper. That's Wipe Free Space Only, not Entire Drive.
I should have been more specific in my post. The files that I lost were in a hidden folder and were not deleted. The files simply disappeared one day (a glitch in the hiding program maybe). I ran Recuva for All Files using the deep scan (or whatever it was called) option. It found all my lost files and recovered them (thank you Recuva). Recuva indicated that the files "WERE NOT DELETED", so I'm assuming that some glitch in the folder hider program may have either moved the files someplace I couldn't find or made them not visible to me (the folder they were in indicated it was empty (0 kb).
At any rate thank you for answering my question. I will take your suggestion and run CClean and CC Drive Wiper (Free Space Only).
The cows are looking quite squeaky clean, thank you. It took rather a lot of labour, and even more water, but I haven't paid for the job. I'm sure I'll regret that later.