lots recovered, few functional

[downriver]

Hi all. I was pleased to recover a lot of lost video files, then very let down to find that VERY few of them actually worked. I only tried to save those marked "very good" in the search. The files open in WMP Classic (as they should), but only the audio is available to play... This is happening across the gamut of video formats (avi, mpegs, windows media, etc.).

The original loss happened when I was trying to cut/paste a huge directory to a drive that didn't have enough space to receive all of them... My math error. I first attempted to find them in the temp / free-space areas of the original "from" drive but found only a couple of irrelevant files that way. Then I scanned the "to" drive and found many (over 2000), and the files were, as I said, found by your application, and also as I said, I only attempted recovery of those found to be in "very good" condition.

Now, all this happened before I just updated the software after the attempted recovery, but the update was appartently a minor one (?). To do the update, of course, I had to lose the list of (supposedly) recoverable files. But the software was stalled anyway, running but not doing anything...

I'm running XP Pro (sp2 built-in), lots of RAM (4G) and P4@2G. The drive scanned is a USB HDD, and the one to which I was saving the recovered files is also a USB external HDD with plenty of room (new 500G drive).

Is there any way to repair these files? If so, any way to do it in a "mass" fashion rather than messing around with ALL of these files individually...? I have Nero 7 ultra -- will that application maybe fix these things...?

How can I judge if a video file labeled "very good" is "good" enough to make the recovery effort worthwhile?

Oh, and I need to add that a lot of these video files gave me a "cannot render file" message in WMP Classic, totally un-readable, in spite of a "very good" labeling by your software.

Thanx in advance for any help/chatter on this.

[GDH]

Hi,

Video files are easily corrupted - which sounds like what has happened to your files. There is not much point in trying to repair them - this almost never works because the file formats are so complicated. If you can give me some more details: i.e.

What exactly are the symptoms of the to "to" drive - did all files disappear?

Was it just the folder you were trying to copy?

It may be possible to run a search with better recovery options.

[downriver]

Yeah, I know video formats / co-decs are complicated. Is there a way to know that a "very good" recovered file is corrupted in order to avoid the LARGE amount of time involved in these operations? I had to leave this machine running all night long to "recover" what I did get, and it was still working when I checked in on it after nearly ten hours of scanning.

I then found that I had to click each and every radio button individually to select the files I wanted to try to recover. The shft>select feature does not seem to work...

After all that (sore wrist... LOTS of TIME...), I find that out of many hundreds of "very good" files recovered, only a literal handful are still functional.

To your particular questions: The original loss happened a while back. All these operation involved USB drives (LARGE ones), not my primary OS-boot drive, and I left the "to" drive alone for the time in between. I honestly do not recall exactly what happened, but no, not all the files I was moving disappeared. Some of them transfered without incident. Others just "evaporated" into (???). They were no longer present on the "from" drive (scanned that first), but did not seem to "make it" to the destination drive. I then also scanned my c: drive in hopes that the "temp" folders or some cache somewhere was hiding the missing files. No go. I finally scanned the destination drive and that's where I found literally thousands of files, about half of which said they were "very good" for recovery.

What I was trying to move was a very large directory, some folders of which transfered and others of which did not. I selected only video formats I knew related to files I was looking for when setting-up the scan (and lots of avi files showed up in the "other files" category that did NOT show up in the avi category... weird).

Hope all that helps... I can leave the subject drive alone for a while, if you think there is a possibility of recovery for these video files. But I am wanting to see if Nero's "re-code" or some other function can repair the files I have already recovered, at least partially.

Again, thanx. I can see that this software will be very useful for me in recovering documents and maybe pix, pdf's etc., but it looks like video files are often just to "fragile" to recover without some other sort of muscular code to accomplish the re-building of co-decs added to the mix.

I'd love to be wrong about that...

Thanx

[GDH]

Hi,

Each file has an Operating System record (on NTFS drives it is called a MFT recored) that points to computer to the location of each file on the disk.

Recover My Files checks the storage location of the recovered file to determine if any other files also occupy that same space on the disk.

As only one file can occupy a storage space at any one time, if two files point to the same location, then one has been overwritten (or party overwritten) and is most likely corrupt. The recovery rating system is worked out as follows:

Overwritten: The original file has been completely overwritten and cannot be recovered.

Poor: the search indicates that between 1% and 50% of the file can be recovered.

Medium: the search indicates that between 51% and 90% of the file can be recovered.

Good: the search indicates that between 91% and 99% of the file can be recovered.

Very Good: there is no indication that the file has been overwritten. The complete file can be recovered (check to see if a preview is available).

Unknown: No files on the disk, including the file that currently occupies this space on the disk, have an operating system record that points to this storage location. It is not possible to determine the integrity of the file.

Whilst this rating system is a good indication of the chance of recovery, a preview of your file, if available, is the definitive way to determine if your file can be recovered. Unfortunately no all file types can be previewed.

To select multiple files, hold down the SHIFT key (or CTRL key), select the files with your mouse, and press the SPACE BAR to turn the selection ticks on (or off).

It is hard to know exactly what happened to your files when you transferred them - it sounds like your files system somehow got screwed up in the process. This can make recovery difficult, because you can easily get file MFT records that end up pointing to the wrong place.

You may like to try a "Complete File Search" of the drive letter for specific file types. Part of this search uses the header and footer of the file to locate it. These ones will be shown with names like "Recovered_FileType_1" and may give you better results.

[downriver]

Thanks for your assistence, and patience with my frustration. I hope you don't think I am "dissing" your software. I did recover a handful of the files, and I hadn't expected to get any of 'em back. A lot of the ones that were recovered are scrambled, i.e., the file name does not match the actual content -- wierdly, some of these actually play properly... In these cases I am guessing that the file sizes got mixed up, that the file I actually see is the same size as the one that originally had the now-wrong file name (??).

Anyway, whenever something like this happens, I find myself learning a lot more about how these marvelous machines work. That's always a good thing, even if I do have to accept losing most of those files.

I am still confused, though, about why so many files that seem the correct size and are deemed by the software as "very good" are in fact useless (won't render or only play audio, if anything).