W10 recovery volumn has vanished/been deleted by windows?!

[Nevar771]

Hello all, new here so appologies for busting in like this.

I've scoured the net to find answers to this and am a little bit closer hopefully...but HELP is very much required...please.

Context

• I was deleting dead files from my documents, unplugged my external USB drive and a few minutes later it threw a BSOD.
• It restarts and halts with a CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED.
• I reboot, it repeats, then goes to Repair mode.

Actions

• It drops me into recovery mode, but all options fail (safe mode, repair, restore).
• Only command prompt will work.
• Microsoft advised build a recovery image and attempt repair from that.

Results
Windows is unable to repair, Microsoft advice is to reinstall.

Detail

• Windows cannot see the recovery partition e:\[recovery]. The repair log file shows that it cannot see nor find it.
• When accessed, the partition was empty. Nothing had been deleted on that drive and indeed under normal windows conditions it's not accessible anyway.
• Under cmd using attrib -h -r -s /s /d *.* on e:\[recovery] I can now see the recovery folder and all its sub folders so it's still there, just not addressable by windows recovery.

Recovery folder manifest

• Logs\ x5 files: bootUX1 to bootUX4.sqml and reload.xml
• WindowsRE\ x3 files: boot.sdi, ReAgent.xml and winre.wim

...should there be more and how do I get Windows to see this and repair?

Closing thoughs and questions
Does anyone know the root cause of this problem as I'm using ESET A/V which has been fairly bomb proof in the 15yrs I've used it, and there's no sign of malware or ransomeware. The system just 'went'.