Error opeing recovered PowerPoint files

[teck]

I accidentally quick formatted a 1 Gig flash drive that had about 70 PowerPoints and various graphics. Once I figured out I formatted the wrong drive, I made sure that nothing else was written to it. I tried the trial version of your program, and it found the PowerPoints and graphics. So I purchased the full version at a local CompUSA, and updated the program to the newest version. When I ran full version of the program, it again found the missing PowerPoints and graphics. The problem is only 5 of the 70 will open in PowerPoint when recovered. The rest of them PowerPoint reports there is a problem with the file. If I click on them in the RecoverMyFiles, it shows them as a "Type" PowerPoint with preview unavailable for this file type. The same holds true with the graphics (png), the majority are black when previewed, and only three of them were actually recovered.

I have tried both the fast and complete format recovery with the same results.

Why does the program tell me it can recover them, and then it does not actually recover them! What can I do to recover the files that will not open in PowerPoint??? (I am using the same version of PowerPoint that was used to create them.)

[GDH]

Please preserver the drive by not writing data to it. If the drive has a write protect switch (some do), then please activate it.

The first thing I would like you to try is a "Complete File Search" of the "physical drive" for the file types that you have on this drive. The will come back with names starting with "Recovered_....". Thats OK, just save the files and open them.

Please let me know the results. It will also help if you can cut and paste the "event log" (the tab at bottom window on left hand side of the results screen) and paste it here.

Thank you.

[teck]

Nothing was written to the drive after the quick format. I did try "Complete File Search" of the "physical drive". It did come back and listed the "recovered" files, and I saved all of them my hard drive.

I can only open 5 of the 70 PowerPoints that your program recovered. The rest will NOT open in PowerPoint. For example when I try to open the recoverd file "Chapter1.ppt", PowerPoint it tells me: "PowerPoint can't open the type of file represented by C:\Chapter1.ppt" If I go back to your program and click on the same file, your preview window Property / Value displays the type as PowerPoint and gives me all the info about the file (Author, Title, Created, etc.)

Here is the log file:
EventLog
Starting search of Lost Files on drive 3\
Completed search of drive 3
There were 4993 FAT file system entries found.
Number of SectorClusters = 1
SectorClusters: 32 - 524 - 281
Total Counts = 281
Average Counts = 281
Sigma = 0
Found partition at 524
Number of found partitions: 1
Partition 1 starts at 524
FAT Size guess 991
FAT Start Sector guess 0
Found 372 directory entries in partition 1
All searches completed.
A total of 4538 file(s) were located.
Time Elapsed: 13.1197 (mins)

[Brett Hunter]

Hi,
I think we have a new version that will fix the problem. If you email me I will send the latest beta version that should overcome that problem. To tell if it will:
1) click on one of the Powerpoint files that does not save properly
2) if in the Properties box (lower left) it says "Allocation: Sequential" then it is likely the new beta will fix this up for you. (you might need to set the Logging to Debug mode - this can be done in Options|General.. You do not need to restart the search)
Anyway email me at brett@getdata.com and I can email you the latest.