where is "my documents" folder

[fred63]

Hello,

I had my HD formatted during a computer repair and a new windows XP was reinstalled. I thought my files where completely lost but it seems that your software can find at least some of them (after a 36 hours running !). I am in the folder view and I can see a large part of my previous files but there is one folder that I cannot see which is probably the most important :"my documents" folder. I tried to find it everywhere but really do not know where it can be ?
Do you have a suggestion ? Why can't I see it ?
Thanks
Fred

[GDH]

Hi Fred,

It is possible that the name of your "My Documents" folder has been destroyed and is now called something like "DIR...". If you ran a Format Recover, make sure that you go through all these folders to see if you can find the contents of your "My Documents". It may be easier to switch back to file view and look for a particular deleted files, such as Word docs etc. that you know were in your My Documents folder. If you find one, put a tick in the box next to it then switch back to folder view to see in which folder it is located.

The other problem is that becase Windows XP has been re-installed, any deleted data in the part of the disk that has been used by the new installation has been overwritten and permanently destroyed. It may be that the contents of your My Documents folder got deleted in the format and then wiped out with the new installation.

I hope this helps.

[fred63]

Hello ,

Yes, it helps a lot and I found the files in : /recovered partition/ lost folder/dir/mydocuments/
I did not check them yet but I have another question :

When we can actually see the name of the file, tha's means that your (great) software found it but does that also means that the file is intact and complete or can it be corrupted and so unusable?
Also, there is sometime a red cross on some folders logo, what does that means ?
Thank you
Fred

[john]

Hi Fred,
When Recover My Files finds deleted folders it marks them with a red cross. Unfortunately no data recovery software can guarantee that the files you see in the recovered files list are in perfect order EXCEPT when they can be fully previewed in the preview window.

So this means that if you can see the contents of the files then they should be 100% recoverable. If you cannot see the conents of the files then it means that either Recover My Files does not preview that file type (it should tell you this), or the file is corrupted.

However, even corrupted files can be repaired and content recovered. For instance a Microsoft Word Document may not be previewable in Recover My Files however some of the information may still exist in the file and be recovered after the corrupt file has been saved. I have also seen JPEG files where the only corruption is the last few lines of picture. All that needs to be don is open the recovered JPEG picture in Microsoft Paint exmine the contents then resave the file.