Congrats
I'm glad you found it, so you can be "safe" around the wife
The problem you mentioned, I have seen some times, while recoverirg hard-drives, when the programs
have problems with crosslinked files and such.
The free programs, coming from the one I mentioned has beem able to fix like 90% of "my" problems.
But there are better ones, but they cost some money,
like "GetDataBack", "R-Studio" and "Active UNDELETE", the last one beeing my favorite at my work.