Windows trashed my removable drive, it's really this stupid?

[JMerrick]

I have a bunch of portable drives for content I want to use on multiple computers. I keep them all on the same 320 GB 2.5" USB portable enclosures.

I'm sure I've done it before, but today I swapped one around while the computer was in standby, and then turned it on.

Windows spectacularly overwrote the MFT of the new disk with the data from the old one, causing me to lose all the data on the disk. All I have now is a bunch of non-working folders in the root that looks like my other drive.

I'm hoping I can recover this data but not sure which order to try things in, as chkdsk /f is likely to trash the old indexes (if the backups still exist) and make the new ones the only copy.

I've never had any problem plugging and unplugging USB devices during standby, it would recognise what was removed and what was inserted once you powered on. I guess the fact they are identical enclosures may have confused it.

Ironically, I just put together my 1 TB backup drive last night which I was going to backup this particular disk's data on to today. FFS! Just can't believe Windows was this stupid. Some of the data I can download again, but some is sadly not replacable (game saves and the like).

[JMerrick]

chkdsk /f fixed it like nothing happened. Lucky me.