MP3 recovery returns bits of files with no ID info.

[mh59068]

Hi. I purchased this software in the hope that I could recover about 4 gigs of music from a drive that I had quick formatted a new installation of Windows XP.

RMF was able to retrieve the data, however it is of little use because the files seem to be broken down into little c***** with no identification information. The files will play, but it's like having 10,000 5 second clips from songs with no information whatever of where they belong. Some files DO have information from the original metadata (id3 tags), however about 90% do not.

It seems as though only the initial "blocks" of the mp3 files contain the ID information, and the remainder of the blocks which make up the entire song contain no information at all.

This leads me to believe that the location information and file associations were destroyed during the format process.

This leaves me with what seems to be successfully recovered but, functionally useless data. To peice it back together would be like solving a 10,000 piece jig-saw puzzle with all the pieces painted solid white...

So is RMF only good for recovering files which are not fragmented? (It seems like that may be the only way to ID the files)...


Thanks.
-MH

[GDH]

It sounds like the songs were fragmented on your drive. The only way to recover the all the fragments of the file as one continuous song is to recover using the files MFT record.

Each file on a PC has an MFT record, which is located in a table at the start of the disk called the Master File Table. The MFT record tells Windows where the file starts on the disk and which clusters of storage space are used to store the file.

When you run Recover My Files you need to do a "Complete Format Recover". Search the drive letter, and in the file type selection list search for the default file types ONLY (do not add any more file types to the search - not even music files). The program will find "OS Items" (which are MFT records) and at the end of the search it will rebuild the old file system and display your files in "Folder View" of the results screen. You should be able to get your music back with full file and folder names.

[mh59068]

Ahh, I see. Thank you for taking the time to respond. I will try it that way and post the results!

[mh59068]

I was able to recover quite a bit of my lost MP3's, however some of them were corrupted. These were from a windows "quick" formatted drive.

However, I also have another drive I used RMF on which was not formatted. It had a corrupt OS because the power went out while it was up****** windows system files. I was able to get flawless MP3's from that drive. (It had over 30 gigs of them that I have been recovering manually over the last 3 years, using the windows recovery console [UGGG].)

This program works like a champ for data which has not been written over and is still intact. Thanks a lot!

[mh59068]

It took a while, but I got everything I wanted off a harddrive I have been recovering stuff manually (through the Windows recovery console) from for the last 3 years. (and another formatted drive, which I was able to get quite a lot from - though some of the files were damaged)

This was money well spent. Thank you RMF team for providing a quality product, and good support for it.


For those considering purchasing this software, read this forum. It does what it says it does, and will recover files that have not been overwritten. I took the plunge - it was well worth it.