all files recovered are 1024k

[12many]

Why can't I recover the files in their original size? I do have the purchased version and the latest update.

[GDH]

What sort of files are they that are 1024k?

[Ron_Marz]

This happened to me the first time I ran Recover My Files (a purchased copy) too. I have a 160 GB FAT 32 hard drive whose contents vanished when I hit the apparent 128 GB Windows 9x limit. I only told RMF to search for AVI and MPG files, and it took five days to find them all. Then when I tried to save the recovered files to another drive, RMF would write a 1024 KB file for each one, no matter what the recovered file's size was reported to be.

I'm rerunning RMF again now, and so far it's been 10 DAYS! and is only one-third of the way through the disk. I've thought of stopping, saving what it's found so far and then recovering the last two thirds, but the "Stop" button isn't working. Recover My Files has taken over my system.

What should I do? I don't want to wait another 20 days (at this rate) to finish this search, only to find later that it's only writing 1024 KB files.

[GDH]

Stop the current search. Use Alt/Cntrl/Del if you have to and end the RecoverMyFiles process.

Make sure you are using the latest version, hit the UPDATE button to check.

Not run a "Fast Format Recover" of the drive? Did it work? If not, run a "Complete Format Recover" but only search for .avi and .bmp files - DO NOT include MPEG.

Please let me know how this goes. A Complete Format Recover search should not take more than 5 or 6 hours.

[Ron_Marz]

I'll try it, but the drive does contain perhaps 100 MPG files between 500 MB and 1 GB in size, and I'll want to recover thoe after the AVIs. Are they recoverable too? And will they still take 10 or more days?

[GDH]

When you run a Format Recover you do not need to select all the file types that you want to get back.

Just search for .bmp and .avi. The program will use these files to locate and validate the old partition information. At the end of the search the entire partition will be rebuilt.

MPEG files are very resource intensive to locate and recover. That is why your search ran so long the first time and that is why I do not want you to include MPEG in the search this time.

[Ron_Marz]

I should have added that the drive doesn't appear to have been reformatted, nor the partition destroyed. Drive E: still shows up in Explorer, is still identified as a 160 GB hard disk, and still has the same folders in it. And Explorer still reports 128 GB of Drive E: as being in use. It's just that the folder that used to contain the 128 GB of files, E:\Video, is now empty.

The filespace is allocated, in otherwords, but the file names are missing. (They're not in the Recycle Bin, either.)

So is Format Recover still the correct choice?

[GDH]

Thats a very odd problem and its hard to know exactly what has happened to your system.

I presume that you have checked that the files have not been moved - you can do this with Recover My Files by adding a folder to the search and selecting the root folder of drive E:\.

You can try a Format Recover, but it is probably best to search the "physical drive" (this will treat the whole drive as one big chunk of raw data and it will try to find the MFT record for each file). Try both a Fast then a Complete Format recover. If this does not work you will have to move to a "Complete File Recover" and search for each file type that you want to get back.

[Ron_Marz]

Okay, thanks.

[Ron_Marz]

Update: I've successfully recovered what seems to be most of my lost video files, using Recover My Files Complete Format Recover for the AVI files and, unbelievably, Windows XP Scandisk for the MPEGs.

Still don't know what caused the original problem, but it happened again when I was saving the recovered files from Drive E: to Drive E:.

When the last bytes of the last file in the 114 GB recovery effort were being written to the disk, Drive C: crashed, wiping out all my operating system files this time. I was easily able to restore these from a recent backup, but I'm curious as to what has now scrambled ALL my hard disks.

The RAM and the case temperature check out okay, and I'm virus-free, so what could it be? Bad power supply? Power surge? And how can I know for sure?