Email Folder Disappeared in Outlook Express 6!

This is strange. Two days ago I bought an external hard drive, tried to connect it via USB. It locked up my system. I noticed that when it locked, I had OE 6 open and 3 or 4 new emails in the inbox. When I had to restart the system by pushing the computers start button in for 10 seconds (it is a Dell Dimension 5100), and restarted OE, those messages were gone. I don't know if that has anything to do with the following problem, but it might.

Tonight, I reopen OE and lo and behold, I have a folder missing that's been there for years. I've moved if from computer to computer. I looked in Windows where all the .dbx files are, but the folder by that name is not there either. I know I did NOT delete that folder. It is almost 10 years old and has close to 1200 emails in it, it was huge. How it can just *disappear* I have NO clue. Don't know if it was related to that jam up with the stupid external hard drive (which I returned today, it never worked) or not.

How, please please please help someone, how can I get this folder back?
I downloaded some free programs from Disck Doctors and Stellar Phoenix, but they can't find it either. I've read that no data is truly ever deleted from the hard drive, and I really need many of those emails back.

I even tried the 'rename the Folders.dbx.' to 'folders.old' to recover, but it just puts up the same folders as before. The missing one was not replaced.
HELP!!!!

 

Hi TexasRaider,

Check this web site on Lost E-Mail Folders

BE VERY CAREFUL - THE STEPS ON THE WEB SITE HAVE YOU UNHIDING FILES THAT ARE HIDDEN BY WINDOWS. MAKE SURE ,IF ALL GOES WELL OR NOT, YOU REVERSE THE STEPS TO HIDE THE FILES AGAIN.