All File Corrupted

[LucidRevenants]

Hey,

I recently had to wipe my computer. I had a power surge that crashed my computer, and upon reboot, was getting the NTLDR is missing error, and despite much effort, the only option was to start from scratch. I run a system where the OS is on my IDE drive, and then I have 2 SATAs as secondary storage drives. When I installed windows, it detected the drives physically as being there in my BIOS, but not in Windows for any practical purpose. I did a format on both of the SATAs, hoping that I would be able to recover the information once my computer read the drives.

I have ran the Complete Format Recovery all the way through, and it looks like most of the information is there, although the structure isn't quite how I organized it, and some files seem to be randomly shuffled and scattered around. No previews were available, but I saved to computer anyway to see what would happen. As feared, ALL of my files (despite having the right names and sizes) are giving errors when I try to open them (image, media, archive, etc). I tried to running the Complete File Recovery as well, and so far I can't preview images there either.

I tried running further file repair software on the files, a .PDF for example, and was getting the message that there was no information to repair.

I know it's a long shot, but do you have ANY suggestions or ideas as to why every single file would be corrupt after a simple format? And if there's anything I can do about it? Or should I just throw in the towel and start mourning the lost data...

Thanks in advance.

[GDH]

Hi,

If you find yourself in this stituation again, dont format the drive. Don't do anyting to it.

You can use Recover My Files to search the physical drive.

The files that you saved probably do not contain any data. Download Explorer View for Windows Explorer from http://download.getdata.com/ExplorerView-Setup.exe. This program integrates into Windows Explorer (press the F8 key to open the preview window). If it does not recognize the file type, it will default to hex view to show you the raw content. I suspect the files may be blank.

The reason for your search results is that there is a table at the start of a dirve called the Master File Table, MFT, which contains a record of every file on your pc, including deleted ones. When you recover files with original file and folder names, this is what Recover My Files is using to locate the data.

In your sitaution, an MFT record for a file is not returning the correct data. So either:

1. The MFT record for each file is corrupt and pointing to the wrong location on the disk; or,

2. The MFT record is correct, pointing to the right location of the file on the disk, but the data in that location is not valid (it could be random data, or it could be zeros if the drive has been wiped).

If you are running Vista, then a format is destructive and writes zeros over your drive and permanently erases the data.

So when you look in the files with Explorer View, if they are all blank, then this is what has happened.

If you do find data in the files, then you should try a new search with Recover My Files (or you can try this anyway just to be sure). Run a Complete File Search on the phsyical drive for specific file types that you know were on the disk. This search does not use the MFT method, but finds files by their header and footer, so if there is still data there they should be found (but they will not have their original names [original names are stored only in the MFT] and will have names like "Recovered_JPEG_1".

Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

[LucidRevenants]

Thank you for your quick response.

I installed Explorer View, and am getting mixed results. For audio many of my mp3s, the hex information appears (I'm running XP, not Vista). When I click on jpgs, nothing appears whatsoever, and pdfs, I get the message "File does not begin with %PDF" so it sounds like it is probably an MFT issue.

I'm going to try running the Complete File Recovery, and see if I can get any better results, although I'm thinking that my images are gone for good *sigh*

[GDH]

In the Explorer View drop down box in the tool bar, change the view to HEX so you can see the raw data in the file.