ALL "recovered" files are corrupt

[Jonathan]

Hi,

I had a major HD crash, so I got a new one, put the old one in an external HD case and hooked it up to my laptop via USB. As expected, Windows is not able to read anything off it, BUT Recover my files found all partitions and showed me lots of files, all in their right folder. Actually, as far as I can tell, it found ALL files.

So I bought it. But I cannot open a SINGLE recovered file, they are all displayed with their right size (I guess) and extension, but not a single can be opened, I always get errors like "File damage or corrupted". Text files have contents that look like

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As a side note, RecoverMyFiles also does not preview anything, it always tells me "Preview not available for this file type". I feel a little screwed over now, because the names and file sizes of my files don't really help me at all... What now, any way to fix that, any possible reasons?

[GDH]

Hi,

The best way to tell if Recover My Files has found valid files is if you can preview them. If you cannot preview documents or graphics, then the chance of a successful recovery is not good. Running in evaluation mode is exactly the same as running when activated - the only thing the key does is allow you to save the files.

There are two possible explanations for what you see.

At the start of the disk is a table that tracks every file on your disk. This is called the File Allocation Table, or for NTFS formatted drives, the Master File Table.

The table has the file and folder name and a records of which storage clusters hold the file data. This is how Windows locates a file when you ask for it.

The file data that you have sent is not valid data for any file type - i.e. it is 'garbage' data.

The fact that you found the full file and folder structure means one of two things:

1. The Master File Table was found and the records that it contains point to the correct location on the disk for each file - but the data on the disk in those areas has been overwritten by new data;

2. The Master File Table is corrupt and does not point to the correct location on the disk.

The first thing to check is to see if any files can be located at all. To do this, use Recover My Files v4 (http://download.getdata.com/RecoverMyFiles-Setup.exe) to run a "Recover Drive" search on the "Hard Disk" using the Automatic setting.

This search will first look for the Master File Table. However the second part of the search is what I am more interested in. It is a "Lost File" search - meaning the program goes down the disk looking for the unique header and footer of specific file types. After a while in "Folder View" of the results screen you should see a "Lost Files" folder which contains files like "Lostfile_JPEG_1". Do you see these? When you click on them, do they preview? If so, it meas that you data is still on your disk and there is hope!

[Jonathan]

Thank you for your reply!

So my disk is NTFS formatted, and the data cannot have been overwritten, just corrupted, because I did not do anything with the drive after it crashed.

I had been running the full search before, but I did it again anyway, et voila, suddenly all files were there and valid and I could start salvaging. Unfortunately, RMF crashed after 1hr30min of copying files, so I started it again today, and now it does find the lost partition and some lost files, but cannot preview any of it again.

So I guess I just start the search again and again, and whenever is one of the lucky instances that it actually finds useful files, I salvage as much as possible until it crashes... right?

[GDH]

Yes, you need to get it to the point where you can preview the files again. Then save what you can as fast as you can.

It is possible that this type of problem could be caused by a bad connection. You may like to experiment with connecting the drive to your pc using an alternate method - eg. different USB port, different USB cable etc.

Try eliminating things from the equation and it may lead you to the answer as to why your drive is not recognized.

[Jonathan]

Hi,

so it all worked out now, on the third try that day it found everything and was able to preview. And it didn't even crash this time while copying, so the job is done, and I am happy.

Thank you for your help in this matter!
Jonathan.