arta What you’re describing could point to a couple of things. One of them might be a dying drive.
First thing I’d do: Check the S.M.A.R.T. status. Use something like CrystalDiskInfo to check the drive’s health. If the drive is failing, the file system might be behaving unpredictably.
If the S.M.A.R.T. status looks bad, don’t try to fix it. Either:
take it to a lab (if the data is super important), or
try making a full byte-for-byte backup image using something like Disk Drill or R-Studio.
Once you’ve got the backup image made, the next step is to scan that image file, not the physical drive, using recovery software. That way you're not stressing a possibly failing HDD any further.
Here’s a full guide that walks through this whole data recovery process step by step (with screenshots).
