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Old 10-23-2008, 07:13 PM
GDH GDH is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 2,719
Default Data Recovery

Hi,

Your file and folder names are all stored in a table at the start of the disk called the Master File Table (MFT). When Windows wants to find a file, it goes and looks up the MFT, a bit like the index in a book, to get the file name and its location on the disk.

In your scenario, a lot of changes have been made to the start of the disk and it sounds like the MFT has been overwritten/corrupted/destroyed.

Once the MFT is gone, you can't get the file and folder names back.

The only search you can now run is a Complete File Search, which identifies specific file types by their header and footer, but because it can no longer use the MFT, the program gives these files names like "Recovered_JPEG_1".
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Graham Henley
GetData Support Staff
http://www.getdata.com
http://www.recovermyfiles.com
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