Did you store your documents in the Minecraft folder? That's the only way I can think it would delete them.
Give this a run, it might be able to recover your stuff;
I have used Kickass Undelete previously. The more you use that drive the less you'll be able to retrieve. You won't know until you run the tool.
You can probably recover almost everything using an Undelete utility. It’s been years since I’ve used one myself but iirc as long as you have not used that particular portion of the drive again those files are technically still there and can be recovered fairly easily.
Try this
NTA as others have mentioned.
You may want to consider looking at software that "undeletes" items deleted on the flash drive. I haven't used one in a few years, but I'll suggest Kickass Undelete since it is open source. Basically, when you delete files the data isn't actually lost, just the "link" or "pointer" to the file. As long as the data hasn't actually been overwritten you'll likely recover some of the photos.
Interested to hear if it works for you. ATB.
If you want to try and recover the files, you can try Kickass Undelete
It is free and open source, but it is for windows, so you would need to reinstall that first. As long as you avoid writing anything to your secondary drive you should be ok.
If you already have a linux system up and running, you could try PhotoRec, but I've found that the filenames often aren't preserved.
Well, if the steamapps folders itself got deleted, there is a limited way of getting everything back. If they do exist, you'd have to install steam, redownload the apps, quit steam and overwrite the apps with your current data.
​
But it sounds more like everything got deleted. In that case, the files are not really deleted, but just "unlisted" and "can be overwritten". To reduce drain on the storage device deleted files never get overwritten. But if you have downloaded stuff or just used your PC and the "marked as empty" spaces are (partially) overwritten the chance to get stuff back is very limited. I can't seem to find the software I used, but it was some console software, so it's hard to use anyway. I have found this: http://kickassundelete.sourceforge.net/ that may help you (Or any other deleted file recovery software, but most cost money if you want to recover more than a few files). Just give it a try. If it can not find any of your folders, your files are most likely gone :(
​
Good Luck!
No Idea what could have caused the files to be deleted beside manual or automatic process, are they by chance invisible?
You need a recovery tool for that and hope that it's physical address hasn't been overwritten (basically deleting means changing a character in the filename which makes the space available to be overwritten)
https://www.lifewire.com/free-data-recovery-software-tools-2622893 I have tried Recuva and Puran however there are opensource options like http://kickassundelete.sourceforge.net/ you should if possible use a portable version that you do not save on the drive where you want to recover because writing more files to disk increases the chance of the files being destroyed
tho I dunno, last year I also experienced sudden loss of files without any trace, even through recovery software (Some large iso file) problem probably existed between chair and keyboard, I just don't know
Get a program to restore the deleted file. When something gets deleted it just deletes the reference to it not the file itself.
However as you write more things to the disk it will gradually overwrite things. So make sure you can undelete sooner rather than later.
Something like this should do the trick. If that doesn't work try another application.
Try this: http://kickassundelete.sourceforge.net/
Edit: Until you have recovered, avoid downloading any big files and do not defragment! the files are still there but there is a chance they could be overwritten