CheckDisk is a file system integrity checker built into Windows’ operating systems. (It runs a FS integrity check similar to the “verify” command in OS X‘s Disk Utility). For the most part, where small file system errors exist on FAT and NTFS volumes, CheckDisk does a reasonable job at repairing them. However, occasionally it repairs the file system, but the volume will still be inaccessible to the user. This is because Checkdisk stores the recovered files in a newly created folder called “found.000”. Last week, a customer dropped in an NTFS formatted Samsung Momentus 2.5” disk to us. Another data recovery company in Dublin wanted to charge them hundreds of euro for recovery. But the files were already on the system in the folder found.000! This job took all but 10 minutes to diagnose and resolve. We did not charge anything to the delighted customer. It was a simple fix. Next time you run CheckDisk on a disk with small errors, don’t forget to check the folder “found.000”- you could end up saving yourself a lot of money.