Why can't it recover filenames?

[stefanossi]

I don't understand why this good program that actually CAN recover files can't recover the filenames too...
It's not fun to have like 7000 files that you dont know what it is, only thing you know is that it's a picture, mp3 or whatever...
Also it seems like it can't recover folder names/structure.

btw: I did a complete scan on a NTFS hdd

[GDH]

File names are not actually stored with the files. File names are stored in a table at the start of the disk called the Master File Table (MFT) or for older operating systems the File Allocation Table (FAT). For the sake of this message I will only refer to MFT.

If you run a FAST SEARCH Recover My Files uses the deleted file entries in the MFT to recover the data and will show you full file and folder names. If you run a FORMAT RECOVER the it uses the MFT data to rebuild the entire partition and will recover full file and folder names.

However, it is possible that the MFT has been destroyed or corrupted and can no longer be read. That means that traditional data recovery progras that just use the MFT method will not work. However, we support more than 100 file types. We can search the disk and find a file by its unique file structure. This means that we can still get the file back, but that the file and folder name is lost.

I hope this make sense.

[kybil]

I'm having the same problem, I moved all my digital photos to a folder and then accidentally deleted this folder. I was hoping to recover the deleted folder, but had no luck so far, should I try something else? I did a quick search & a complete search.