My laptop's internal HDD was destroyed along with all its files, MY memories/work. I bought a new one. It appears not to have any issues, but I can't trust this. This has been very hard for me, but thank you everyone for your help, sincerely.
When I originally posted this, I had not seen any evidence of files being lost on my internal hdd, not since installing ubuntu 13.01. Unfortunately, I was wrong. I keep losing files. Years of my life, pictures of loved ones, art and music by myself and my friends. I'm losing it. It appears to be going after older files first, especially anything with "back up" in the title, nested folders, and almost exclusively destroys personal content. I believe the problem was lying dormant for the last couple months. suddenly it's popped up, and just when I was starting to believe that AT LEAST Ubuntu Linux had helped me saved most of my stuff. I received a new external hdd today. I'll try to save what i can.
original post:
My computer is an ASUS G7VW. While running Windows 7, my files started disappearing and being moved and even copied, without my consent. I did a full install of ubuntu 13.01 (it gave me the option to preserve my personal files, but otherwise fully format the drive. everything seemed fine and I was able to recover most of my files since Ubuntu read my HDD correctly and most of the problem had been in the directory. However, the problem continues to ravage my two external HDDs. I haven't found any evidence that it's messing up the contents of my /home
folder, but files and folders on both my external HDDs continue to be "mislocated."
One of my external drives (toshiba desktop external drive) is fairly new; the other (seagate freeagent goflex) is a bit older. I'm certain that the age of the drive is not a factor in this context. Both external drives and the laptop hdd are 1TB drives. Neither of the external drives have been damaged physically, or even so much as left in a hot/freezing car. I did only find out a couple months ago that usb is not "hot-swappable" but now I always unmount then disconnect the drive. The problem has persisted since i've wised up.
The drive healthSMART util included in Ubuntu says all drives are healthy. Still, it takes an extremely long time to copy or burn data, from the Ubuntu drive or the USB drives (if that helps). I've recently been trying `rkhunter, clamtk, and comodo to eliminate the possibility of a virus, so far it's turned up nothing significant. At least I'm learning a lot about Ubuntu Linux... but I hope someone can shed some light on what's messing with my personal files.
Update: I found out why Clamtk wouldn't scan the external drives; it has to run from the terminal via gksu clamtk to select that option. Frustratingly, it's reported well over 300 possible "threats" on either hdd, the vast majority of which are not viruses or malware, and since you have to go through them one by one. it's been very time consuming, but I'm hoping it will be worth the effort.
Update & more info: Both of the external drives use the NTFS file system, and the internal drive was formatted with the default filesystem used by ubuntu 13.01 (ext3?). the external toshiba drive is now reporting "Contents: 207,907 items, totalling 955.0 GB (some contents unreadable)" ... I don't know why any of it would be unreadable, and that sound about 200GB more than I thought it was holding, but that's just a guestimate.