Some Documents recovered are Unreadable

[J0123b]

Hi, I recently had my hard drive reformatted and lost all of my word documents. I installed the recover-my-files program and scanned the hard drive. It found all of the documents and I saved all of them, however a large portion of them are just a mess of symbols and boxes. Is there anyway to get those files back to normal?

[martinbeaulne]

I Had exactly the same problem, someone has an answer ?

[GDH]

Hi,

At the start of a Windows hard disk is the Master File Table. This is like the index of a book and it contains the file name, folder name and storage location of all files on the disk, including deleted files.

If you recover a file with its full file and folder name, then it has been done by reading the record in this table and then going out to the disk to collect and save the file.

A deleted file will stay on your pc up until such time as it is overwritten (or partially overwritten) by new data, at which time it is destroyed.

This is why if you have lost data it is important to minimize the use of your PC until such time as you have been able to run a search to try and recover them.

If you recover files with there full name that contain jumbled characters, then this is what has happened - new data has overwritten the location where this file once resided. If the file has been fully overwritten, then there is nothing you can do to repair it. If it has been partially overwritten, then you may be able to repair the file or extract information from it, depending on what type of file it is and how badly damaged it is.

The other search that Recover My Files does is to look for "Lost Files". This search finds files by their structure, i.e. their unique header, content and footer. For example, a JPEG always starts and ends with a JPEG header and footer.

When you run a Recover Files or Recover Drive search, it is worth checking both for original file names and also the "Lost Files".