Encrypted Word Documents

[bru77]

Hi,

I purchased recover my files to recover files from a formatted hard drive. was quite successful for the most part. All mp3s and jpegs recovered no problem but some word documents were just full of random nonsence symbols. This was a couple of years ago and I left it at that.

Only recently I've come across these old word documents on a disc but i dont have the old hard drive that they were recovered from.

Anway I only thought of why these files were not reading properly and its probably because they were password protected when they were deleted. Is there any way I can fix them? I've tried tons of suggestions from the web but nothing works. I think they need to be decrypted??

Thanks in advance

Brian

[GDH]

Hi,

It sounds l ike the files have been overwritten with other data.

At the start of the disk is a table called the Master File Table. Each file on the pc has MFT record within this table.

An MFT record points to the location of the disk where a file resides. This is even true of deleted files.

However, it is possible that that location on the disk for the deleted file can be used by Windows to store new data, thus overwriting what was previously there.

The MFT record does not know this, and it is still used to recover the file. It is only when you open it that you find it is full of gibberish - i.e. the data that has been recoverd does not belong to that file and cannot be properly read by the opening program.