Alan_B

I have never yet known a Windows Update that was safe Even Microsoft do not think them safe or they would not create a System Restore Point as part of the installation

I think a data recovery specialist would have more effective means of dealing with a water-logged HDD than packing it in Rice. I guess that every rotation of the disk in a water-damaged HDD would further degrade the media and the data.

I have never heard of that, and Google ain't telling me May I assume you were repairing the MBR and not the MFT ? If a recent Windows 8 machine using UEFI has a GPT style HDD then adding an MBR would probably add to its woes. I too am puzzled that Recuva accesses a RAW disk. If Windows does not recognise a partition as having NTFS or FAT32 format then it calls it RAW and refuses to allocate a Drive Letter to it, and Recuva 1.48 only scans partitions with drive letters. Perhaps the HDD is mostly RAW but with a tiny partition that has a drive letter, and Windows Explorer and Recuva are dealing with that tiny partition, but are being deceived by corrupt MFT of FAT tables that recursively cross-link from the end to the beginning. Give me 5 minutes and I can have another half dozen guesses I suggest a screen-shot of Windows Disk Management showing all the Volume and Disk information, and also please state the Drive Letter that Recuva is trying to scan.

Kevin never said what his format was so I raised the "if" possibility. It may be worth considering whether backward compatibility exists between USB2 and USB3 when dealing with an HDD. Zentimo Speed tests on a USB2 Flash drive show a slight improvement when "mismatched" with USB3 Port :- Connected to Addon Extra PCI Express USB3 Port :- USB DISK 2.0 USB Device MULTIBOOT (F:), 7.4 GB "FAT32" Type of file Speed of reading Speed of writing Small files (32.0 KB): 5.72 MB/s 1.13 MB/s Medium files (3.0 MB): 27.73 MB/s 6.41 MB/s Large files (100.0 MB): 29.24 MB/s 7.63 MB/s Connected to Built-in Basic USB2 Port :- USB DISK 2.0 USB Device MULTIBOOT (F:), 7.4 GB "FAT32" Type of file Speed of reading Speed of writing Small files (32.0 KB): 4.54 MB/s 1.03 MB/s Medium files (3.0 MB): 23.94 MB/s 6.16 MB/s Large files (100.0 MB): 25.17 MB/s 7.40 MB/s Zentimo Speed tests on a USB3 HDD show it is SLOWER than Flash when reading on a mismatched USB2 Port and unbelievably very much slower than a Flash drive when "mismatched" on a USB2 Port :- Toshiba 1 TB USB3 HDD N.B. Partition J:\ is at the fast start end of the drive Partition K:\ is at the slow far end of the drive Connected to Addon Extra PCI Express USB3 Port :- TOSHIBA External USB 3.0 USB Device TOSHIBA EXT (J:), 1000.0 MB "NTFS" Type of file Speed of reading Speed of writing Small files (32.0 KB): 18.72 MB/s 12.22 MB/s Medium files (3.0 MB): 83.73 MB/s 65.27 MB/s Large files (100.0 MB): 113.03 MB/s 113.48 MB/s Tosh-Top-1GB (K:), 999.0 MB "NTFS" Type of file Speed of reading Speed of writing Small files (32.0 KB): 18.69 MB/s 11.79 MB/s Medium files (3.0 MB): 48.10 MB/s 38.20 MB/s Large files (100.0 MB): 51.76 MB/s 54.91 MB/s Connected to Built-in Basic USB2 Port :- TOSHIBA External USB 3.0 USB Device TOSHIBA EXT (J:), 1000.0 MB "NTFS" Type of file Speed of reading Speed of writing Small files (32.0 KB): 8.01 MB/s 4.45 MB/s Medium files (3.0 MB): 16.08 MB/s 625.90 KB/s Large files (100.0 MB): 17.21 MB/s 695.12 KB/s Tosh-Top-1GB (K:), 999.0 MB "NTFS" Type of file Speed of reading Speed of writing Small files (32.0 KB): 7.76 MB/s 4.14 MB/s Medium files (3.0 MB): 18.10 MB/s 868.29 KB/s Large files (100.0 MB): 19.49 MB/s 785.26 KB/s

Augeas tested performance on a NTFS drive Should Kevn expect a slower speed if his drive was FAT32 ?

Sorry, but I think you may be comparing Apples and Peanuts. Reading data from an external USB2 drive takes far longer than from an internal SATA connected drive. Zentimo xStorage Manager shows me that reading 3 MB files and 100 MB files is done at the same speed for each of my USB2 Flash Drives, and the actual speed of each was between 25 MB/Sec for the best and 13 MB/Sec for the slowest, but each and every one could only read 32 KB files at a speed between 4.12 MB/Sec and 5.3 MB/Sec, apart from a USB3 Flash in my USB2 port that read 32 KB at 6 MB/Sec. I conclude that if Recuva attempts to read 4 kB clusters via USB2 then it will be restricted to far worse than 4 MB/Sec. Sometimes a USB2 drive only runs at USB1 speed, which is another world of pain.

If you have a Macrium Reflect Partition Image backup of Windows 8 you can mount that as a virtual drive and use TreeSize Free to rapidly analyze the sizes of all folders and subfolders, and launch a second instance of TreeSize to analyze your real Windows 8.1 and do a side-by-side comparison to see the cause of the 12 GB difference. I guess that you could do the same with NON-Macrium image backups.

Thanks for removing the quotes. Two separate avenues for you to follow. 1. Give a full and comprehensive description of all the circumstances surrounding "I had a iPod Classic 80gb 6th gen break down on me". Some one may know ways of bringing an iPod back to life. It might be appropriate to start a new topic in the hardware forum. 2. Get advice from Lazesoft developers. When you launch the Recovery Suite, on the bottom left corner is a HELP button. This provides Tutorials and explanations. The final section is "Questions and Support", and gives an email address for support. They were very helpful with all my questions via email, normally responding within a day. I very strongly suggest that you ask their advise for resolving your problem. Also obtain their opinions on my following suggestions :- Their product is able to create partition image backups and restore them, and I have tested and proven this on a range of Flash Drives using FAT32 and NTFS. It would be a good idea to create an image backup before any further modifications to the iPod file system. Data Recovery options include FAT/FAT32 and NTFS and HFS+ It is reasonable to assume that Image / Restore will include HFS+, BUT I rarely trust assumptions, so I suggest you ask them if Restore will work on HFS+ as well. Lazesoft can delete and create partitions. You just possibly might benefit by either :- creating a 71 GB partition after the 9 GB NTFS partition; or deleting the NTFS partition and creating an 80 GB partition. When you create a partition, there is more free space available for files with FAT (which has no overheads) than FAT32 (which has a couple of File Allocation Tables), and NTFS is even worse with its MFT. I think that FAT will cause the least amount of extra damage to any data that may still be present. BUT follow whatever Lazesoft advises you. P.S. You can create a Lazesoft WinPE Boot disc and this is needed for image backups of Windows Partition C:\. WinPE is able to bypass the access restrictions and aggravations of a live Windows partition. The thought occurs to me that your Windows might be "infected" with DRM which imposes severe restrictions on access to iTunes, and just possibly Windows DRM is stopping Lazesoft from recovering your music, whilst WinPE is free of DRM. All the best Alan

I have another idea to test out - but I need some sleep before I do anything stupid. I will be back tomorrow.

Not any more - I lost the starting handle.

But they said it and acted on it. Before that every car came complete with a hole in the front bonnet to accommodate the insertion of the starting handle that was carried in the boot.

@Mike It looks as if you tried too hard and did not get the 20.9 MB download of the Home version from Softpedia which is Free of charge and free of limitations, but instead got the 172 MB download of the Unlimited Technician version which costs $199 and may have severe limitations if you have not yet purchased and registered. Partition Recovery commences with the bottom right corner stating "Selected files: 0 (0bytes(s))" and during the initial scan of the drive I can click on a box in the left hand side, and a tick appears in the box and the summary in the bottom right corner will show the totals of all that it has detected at that stage. Your screen-shot does not show any totals, zeros or otherwise. I also notice that on the extreme left of some boxes are smaller squares with '-' or '+' to allow expansion of a tree view. The Home version has no small squares, instead it has right pointing "arrows" in the shape of triangles. The above is all consistent with your having the most powerful version from that developer, but it needs purchase/registration before it will do anything useful It also looks as if you did not try hard enough You have to tick any box on the left to select all the files which are within that folder You have NOT ticked partition E:, nor either of the "Damaged Partitions" Please note that "LostFiles" and "Lost Folders" may be exactly what you need, They might be "lost" because they have been over-written or they might be perfectly usable but the original path is unknown. NB Please refrain from quoting the posts you are answering, It makes my wrist ache scrolling down to the bottom of a long topic Regards Alan

Partition Recovery IS the one to use. It does NOT write anything to to iPod. It DOES find and recover files that were in partitions that Windows can no longer see. In partition recovery you can select no more than one partition at a time, BUT you can select the complete physical drive and this defaults to Automatic Recovery rather than specific types AND if you wish you can check the box "Specify Search Range ..." and that allows you to change the start point and the quantity of sectors to search (and shows the total number of sectors on the drive). It might not do what you need, but it may, and it only takes a bit over 2 hours to search an entire 600 GB HDD which was GPT and Windows spuriously changed to MBR. so it would probably take no longer than a coffee break on your 80 GB HDD. In your particular case you over-wrote the HFS+ 80 GB partition by using Windows which formatted the first 12% as NTFS. This is an unfortunate complication, but I think you risk further damage if you now attempt to undo what has happened. I hope that Lazesoft can overcome all obstacles for you as it has for me.

If Microsoft hold the encryption recovery key, can they or NSA etc re-encrypt your system to lock you out should you be suspected or accused of copyright violation ?

Please note that Lazesoft also includes "HFS Plus File System" under its Data Recovery => Partition Recovery capabilities. I have no HFS drive so have no experience with anything but RAW, FAT32, FAT, and NTFS.

It is probable that an iPod HDD holds data on a file system that Windows cannot correctly format. I suggest you attempt to recover WITHOUT performing any extra writing or formatting. Someone may be able to suggest a way of using Recuva without further writing and to get what you want, otherwise there are alternative possibilities listed in http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=39620

Sorry it failed. It might be worth contacting the developer. He may be able to advise of a work-around, or he might even add Unicode support. http://www.nirsoft.net/contact-new.html

I believe this forum is not allowed to assist with the professional version. Instead you should get support direct from the developers via links provided when you purchased it.

I notice that 45 million kb has suddenly become 4 mil kb I do not see any screenshot. Whilst I agree with MTA that CCleaner is safe, it may have unexpected and regrettable consequences if you let it loose on 45 GB or even just 4 GB of files that might not be the temporary files that you think them to be.

Please try again with ALL the information, i.e. not just the picture showing F: followed by S: but also all the text shown under the headings Volume; Layout; etc. etc. Why do you imply that F: is healthy ? Are you attempting to rescue files on F: or S: or both, and what are you saving them to.

I suggest a screenshot of the CCleaner Analysis. Also basic specs :- Version of Windows; Used space and free space of C:\

Did you try Lazesoft Recovery which has worked perfectly for me when Windows turned my Secondary HDD into "RAW DATA".

Assumptions are never safe - especially when the version of Windows is unknown. My 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate APPEARS to have 6421.3 MB in WinSXS, and 3116.9 MB in System32 plus 1066.4 MB in SysWOW64 My 32 bit XP Home has 28.4 MB in WinSXS and 1121.1 MB in System32 I have not yet tried trimming the redundant old updates. Perhaps I never will - like the last lemming I stand at the top of the cliff waiting to see if the other lemmings landed safely

Piriform aim for user safety and it is unlikely that they would implement a system wide "search and destroy" on the User product. You could always ask for a special professional licence paying version. Otherwise I think you can use Batch scripts using "for /F "delims=" %i in ..." etc to directly delete without involving CCleaner or vbscript or powershell scripts to achieve the same.

OOOOPPSSS I have just clicked the "Like This" button on Dennis's post and the usual Piriform error occurred "You have reached your quota of positive votes for the day". Looking at the named "users online" I see a Google Mobile BOT is here. Should I now look out for Google publishing my Avatar's "Like" endorsement of Dennis and his guitar