Alan_B

Suggestion :- For any future screen shots you can reduce the width of the treeSize display, and if for any particular folder expansion you could place the C:\ display adjacent to the corresponding F:\ display and create one screen shot showing both displays, that would allow me to see both C:\ and F:\ side by side in the same TAB on my browser. C:\ has almost 11 GB extra data than F:\ in System Volume Information. I suspect this is due to System Restore Points, and if you restored your system to the earliest available Restore Point then in theory this will undo all the changes which it has monitored. If and when you try that, stand by for a bumpy ride, you might find you are worse of and then you could be thankful for a macrium image backup to restore the current state. Under C:\from_old_computer you have 7697 MB, This probably holds backups that could have been created when your computer first went bad, or backups and "work-in-progress" when you were using "Vista Easy Transfer- program" If you expand this we might get an idea of what it holds. I will not have any clue about the relevance of or how to use that 7697 MB of data, but I am sure there are experts around that can advise you. Under "F:\Users" you have 14,207 MB Under "C:\Users" you have 6431 MB If you expand both of these by one level you will see the cause of the difference. It is quite possible that F:\ is showing many user profiles, and C:\ is omitting some. I know that as administrator on my XP Laptop I had full access to all system files and all my profile, but no access at all to other user files - EXCEPTING a Macrium image backup ensures that every file in every profile is backed up, and If I then mount the image backup as P:\ and tick the box "Enable Access to Restricted Folders", then I could use TreeSize to fully explore P:\ Your Clone F:\ was created by Macrium to similarly include everything. It might be worth mounting an image of C:\ as P:\ and running TreeSize on P:\ You might find more user profiles than you can observe direct on C:\ Under "F:\ProgramData\Microsoft" you have 202 MB Under "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft" you have 836 MB If you expand both of these by one level you should identify the cause of the 634 MB difference. I understand that in theory a Flash Drive may have a Partition Table which could hold 4 primary partitions, but that it cannot have an extended partition table to accommodate extra logical partitions. In Practice Windows Disk management does not let me create more than one partition on a Flash Drive, and a third party partition manager attempts to do this but with disappointing results. I am fairly sure that when no disasters occur with Outlook or "Vista Easy Transfer- program", you could Clone C:\ to F:\ and your one partition would be good, but I fear that the MBR might be "distorted" due to Flash Drive technology limitations, in which case cloning C:\ from F:\, or alternatively Image backup of F:\ restored back to C:\, would give a good partition but the MBR might fail to boot up, in which case you would need the WinPE Boot Rescue CD to implement "MBR Repair" I think that exhausts my ability to advise on how to determine what is different between C:\ and F:\, and how to make image backups that should allow an easy recovery to the existing state if anything else goes wrong. I am unable to advise upon the relevance of the differences between C:\ and F:\ and what to do for Outlook etc., but there are experts around that can take it from here. Regards Alan

Copy and Paste may work, but you could dig yourself into a deeper hole, in which case you might regret it if you do not first make an image backup. Please note that I have no knowledge of outlook, other than its PST file can be stuck near the end of the partition and prevent Windows from shrinking itself, I suggest that you start a separate topic with suitable title to get advice upon restoring Outlook files and Profiles, since experts on such subjects may never look at a topic related to Macrium Clone/Image. Similarly I suggest you start a separate topic about damage cause by accidents with "Vista Easy Transfer- program", Experts who have had their fingers burnt may be able to advise upon any recovery options and capabilities, or failing that they might advise what things get deleted or duplicated or relocated and to where. All I can do in this topic is advise upon preserving all information in Image backups which can be used to undo any further damage caused should Copy and Paste aim at the wrong targets. Please explain the circumstances under which you obtained two views of C:\. One view shows :- the same 26.4 MB in the Recycle Bin which you have in the clone, monster 8,3220 MB of System Volume Information, and 205 MB of Programdata whilst the other view shows :- 7697 MB from_old_computer 5658 MB Users and 1024 MB of ProgramData 0.0 MB in the Recycle Bin ; Exclamations against the bottom four items, and no access to System Volume Information. Did you log into one profile with Admin authority for one screen shot, and log into another profile without such authority for the other ? Have you any other profiles available with different views ? Please try clicking on the wedge shaped pointer on the left of ProgramData folder and this will expand that folder to show its subfolders. Do this to each instance of Tree View. One (or more) of these subfolders will be significantly larger in one instance than in the other instnace, and you can click again to expand as much as you need to identify what application(s) are responsible for the difference between 1024 MB and 205 MB. Alan

Why are you searching for Undeleted Files ? Is it possible that you are forcing Recuva to attempt recovery of a protected system file ? I suspect that Windows might keep Recuva waiting for ever if it was attempting to access Pagefile.sys

The "Computer" screenshot shows what it calls Hard Disk Drives (3), below which is a dividing line with the legend "Devices with Removable Storage (1)" Below which are removable drives - and you show only the DVD/CD-R/W Drive (E:), and any normal Flash drives that I am familiar with should also be removable and shown below the line. "ANDYS MAIN CLONE" is above the line so your computer is saying that your clone is NOT a Removable Flash On my computer I can select either my Flash Drive (F:) or my DVD/CD (L:), and right click for a context menu with many items, including "Format..." followed by "Eject" The context menus for my SSD (C:) and HDD (E:) etc do NOT include "Eject". Does your Clone (F:) context menu include "Eject". Is your Clone plugged into a USB2 port ? Can you give a link to what you bought so I may read the capabilities of this Flash Drive ?. Please do not fear the consequences of a correctly performed "Make an Exact copy ... ", but do continue to fear further loss of data due to mistaken actions. I do not know what may have been lost. Please note that any old data that may be lost is now in "Free space" and liable to be overwritten when the next file is created. This old lost data MAY be recovered with Recuva or other competing utilities that we are not allowed to discuss here. The purpose of "Make an Exact copy ..." is that it not only backups up all the files that are NOT lost, but it also backs up the Free Space and all the old lost data. By ticking this particular box you simply give yourself extra recovery options that are less reliable in quality but may be better than nothing when all else fails. Comparing the Treeview displays might show that C:\ has got 10 GB less free space than F:\ because C:\ now has 10 GB of extra "Easy Transfer" backups, Do you happen to know how much free space existed on drives C:\ and F:\ before you used "Vista Easy Transfer- program" ? Comparing the Treeview displays might show that C:\ has got 10 GB less free space than F:\ because C:\ now has 10 GB of extra "Easy Transfer" backups, and then we can guess and hope. Yes, that flash drive would probably hold the image backup of either C:\ or F:\, but may be insufficient for both. In my view your C:\ system is corrupted by :- Vista going wrong and causing you to attempt system changes that caused further damage; Followed by further damage inflicted by what Microsoft called their "Vista Easy Transfer- program". Your F:\ Clone is your best hope - Vista's initial errors should have had no impact, and the only collateral damage might have been misdirected writing to F:\ instead of C:\ If you make an image backup of F:\, perhaps to your 64 GB Flash, then with a WinPE Boot Rescue CD you can restore that backup to either the existing or a brand new and empty internal HDD (which is hopefully quite cheap). Please DO NOT RESTORE TO THE EXISTING HDD WITHOUT first also "Make an Exact copy ... " Image backup of this existing HDD. With just a little bit of luck your Laptop will boot-up. and with a lot more luck your outlook profiles and photos etc will live again. You can avoid the cost of another internal HDD by getting an external HDD of at least 200 GB, and partition this with perhaps 100 GB of Unallocated space. The partition on this external is for one "Make an Exact copy ... " Image backup of both the C:\ and D:\ partitions of the internal Drive, and one "Make an Exact copy ... " Image backup of both the F:\ Clone. The purpose of the Unallocated space is to allow the WinPE Boot Rescue CD to demonstrate its capability to restore the image backup of the Clone F:\ into that space creating partition G:\. If Treesize shows that G:\ is the same as F:\ then all is good. I am a retired electronic specialist and computer hardware and software designer and never expect anything good from a computer. Alan

So far as my Palemoon Browser (based on Firefox code) is concerned it has bookmarks in its profile which is located at C:\Users\Alan\AppData\Roaming\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon\Profiles\ In actual reality it is located at D:\Junctions\PaleMoon\Alan\Roaming\Pale Moon\Profiles\ Please note that Pale Moon is NOT a "Folder" but a "Junction Folder" or "Reparse Point" which links to the genuine "Folder" Pale Moon. I did exactly the same thing with the slightly different paths used by Firefox, long before I was enlightened and switched to Palemoon. The result is that an image backup of C:\ is not encumbered with browser caches that have no value. Incidentally, CCleaner still cleans the caches which it sees as being on C:\etc and not at d:\etc

This option is NOT needed. At the bottom of the download page is a link to other builds http://www.piriform.com/recuva/builds This includes the Portable version which you simply unzip to any Drive / Partition / Folder that you wish.

Accessed, Created, and Modified are stupid names for something else when Microsoft is involved. Some years ago an emergency Patch Tuesday update included Explorer.exe The update that fixed the vulnerability had the same creation date as the original vulnerable version. The update version was SMALLER than the version which had the vulnerability. I concluded that the original source file included the date string of when the developer threw the code together, and the source code had extra debug code (and I now also realise backdoors for authorised agencies), and the "bug-fix" was not a change of the source code but a change to a header file or make/build file that deactivated the bit of debug (or backdoor) which was the latest zero day exploit. I found some time stamp changes in Microsoft files that were even stranger, but I feared for my sanity and gave up looking for reasons. All the above refers to files that have NOT been deleted and corrupted. Files that Recuva looks for have had additional confusion thrust upon them.

By default Macrium Imaging uses "Intelligent sector copy". Please proceed up to the point where the Finish button is on the bottom right corner, and before clicking Finish go to bottom left corner for "Advance Options" and select "Make an Exact copy ... Deleted files may be recovered." Do this for separate images of both C:\ and F:\ I hope you will not need to depend upon the recovery of deleted files, but a few extra minutes now might save months of anguish later. I notice that F:\ is "basic" and not "removable". Is your Flash Drive actually an SSD that can physically replace a 2.5" or 3.5" HDD ? Alan

1. I understand that "Run as Administrator" jumps over hurdles that block Administrator privileges on a user account, hence to be fair you should ONLY compare BAT file capabilities with CCLeaner under the same condition. If your "Administrator privileges on a user account" are NOT sufficient to use the BAT file then you are running CCleaner WITHOUT adequate access. 2. When I updated Macrium Reflect from version 5.1.???? to 5.2.???? I lost the context menu ability to unmount a mounted image. The first reason suggested by a Macrium user on the Macrium forum was that I ran with UAC turned off. A Macrium developer rapidly corrected him and advised that this Only Applies to Windows 8 (or perhaps 8.1 - I forget) My particular problem was identified as a failure of the update installer to register an executable, and a couple of "Run as Administrator CMD.EXE" Dos commands sorted out the registration and my context menu worked. The point of this anecdote is that I learnt from this experience that even when the executables are correctly registered, For Windows 8 THAT CONTEXT MENU ITEM ONLY WORKS WHILST UAC IS TURNED ON. Moral of the story - If you do not want UAC then Windows 8 is not the O.S. for you - choose Linux to avoid surprising failures

You got me

Additional screen shot request :- Download this Freeware version of TreeSIze. It offers an installer *.exe but I always click and the scroll bar then provides a portable ZIP which I prefer. https://www.jam-software.de/customers/downloadTrial.php?article_no=80&language=EN& With this you can scan your HDD system partition C:\, and then use the menu "File" and select "New Instance", and then use this new instance to scan the Flash drive D:\ or whatever it might be. With both scans side by side you can quickly see the sizes of various folders, with the largest folder at the top. If any folder is significantly different between the size on HDD relative to size on Flash this would indicate where something has changed, and clicking on the relevant folder will open up one level to show more detail upon which sub-folders are affected. Hopefully Windows and important subfolders such as Winsxs etc have not been damaged. A screen shot showing the differences might give a quick idea of which regions have been affected. Alan

Smug feeling Windows users would not be so gullible Or would they

Restore should be the same regardless of Free or Purchase. Restore when running under an existing installed Windows is :- Impossible if you want to restore your existing Windows partition ; very effective and very similar to restoring via a WinPE Boot Rescue CD ; practical via a Linux Boot Rescue CD - unless you are unlucky with your hardware - because Linux doe not incorporate all the Drivers that can be included in WinPE. Restore only works with an Image Backup. It should not recognize your Clone drive as an image backup. A successful Clone would have allowed you to disconnect your original HDD and boot and run from the Clone. The first issue would then have been whether Vista and your hardware allow you to boot from an external flash drive, and whether you have the patience to live with an operating system that is running from a Flash Drive. Unfortunately the operation was not successful. The system rebooted with original HDD and clone Flash both connected, and that led to a series of corruptions of your installed HDD system. You previously said "but now it may be that this 8GB of data and maybe more got shunted to a subfolder on the/my clone copy..." Please explain exactly what damage was done to your clone. Do you mean that the 8 GB of data in various folders on the Flash was moved to a different set of folders on the same Flash, or that the original clone Flash duplicate of the HDD remains and in addition you have an extra 8 GB in this new subfolder ? An image is so much safer and more secure and so much more versatile. Amongst other things, you can verify an image and Macrium will validate all the hash checksums to confirm it can read what was once written. A clone has no hash checksums and you cannot know if a data bit got lost on the USB / eSATA / SATA / IDE hardware route to the clone, and you will never know if over the course of time a clone data bit gets lost (cosmic rays/electrostatic damage/temperature degradation in a flash drive, vibration/falling of shelf/whatever can go wrong will go wrong in a HDD) M Y A D V I C E Launch Windows Disk management and post a screen shot which shows all the Volume and Disk information on both the HDD and the Flash Drive. Also post a screen shot of "Windows Vista Primary visual green-colored folders that contain my/these files". This will assist us with further recovery advice. Further advice will be available once your screen shots have been considered, and I suggest you wait for that advice before taking further recovery actions that might result in further data loss Meanwhile, whilst waiting for such advice, I suggest you create a WinPE Boot Recovery CD (unless you already have one created with your latest version). Running under Windows any "in use" files (no matter how damaged) cannot be replaced by any files that you navigate to in the Flash Drive, BUT there are no "in use" files when running from a Boot CD, and WinPE includes a rudimentary Windows Explorer so you would then be able to replace any file without any restriction. If you wish to play safe, before having any accidental losses whilst trying to get your files correctly copied, you might consider using (getting) an external HDD for backing file backups and even image backups I would suggest that if your HDD has all 70 GB space used up, a Macrium image backup would easily fit into less than 50 GB and if your Flash has both the original 70 GB plus another growth of 8 GB, then it would fit into less than 55 GB. You would probably get by with an external 100 GB HDD, but more is better. You might consider starting with one off 500 GB (or even 1 TB) and at a later stage getting a second one, rather than splashing out on a 2 TB or larger. If / when you have two externals you can make backups on one and move that to a different room whilst you then use the other external. Then if your computer burns out and damages one external the other external should survive. Periodically you replace the older images with the more recent images. Regards Alan

The reason is you are not as lazy as me

You stated :- That strongly implies that you are self employed, receiving payment from people that need you to mend their hardware and/or remove malware or contend with software installation issues. There was absolutely no indication that you are a "full time hardware/software support engineer for a large corporation". In my view Hazelnut asked you a perfectly reasonable QUESTION - she was not making an accusation. In my view you have been overly defensive in each of your two subsequent posts.

At 10:34 there was a post stating and the log file became a few hundred MB whilst monitoring a large number of drives overnight. Users :wacko:

Windows may be configured to power down drives that are not in use. "Green" Drives may power down of their own accord regardless of Windows. I understand that some Hard Disk monitors will refrain from background monitoring of Disks that are in standby so that the Disks may remain in standby. Perhaps the latest Speccy will wake up the drives and take measurements when you launch its display window, but the background monitoring could possibly "let sleeping dogs lie" whilst disks are on standby. It is saving you power and wear and tear, and it will not merit over-temperature monitoring whilst in standby

Why Run when you can Analyze and then export to a file everything that is targeted. You might then search the export file and see the name of a book and the path which leads to it.

Thanks for the missing details. A further essential detail is the Hard Drive itself. Can you be more precise on what model you have. I am sure that Piriform always test the software before release, but they would never release anything if they first tested against every available make and model and size of :- Hard Disk Drive Ram module CPU Motherboard BIOS I have never yet seen a UNIVERSAL problem with Speccy that affects every user. I have only seen failures with an unusual combination or one particular component model I know it is more than a one man band. Forum moderators may know actual numbers. Please note that I am not a developer, not even a forum moderator, just another user of the Piriform products. Belated welcome to the forum Alan

A bug report ought to include the Operating system and whether it is 32 bit or 64 bit. I cannot understand how a failure to "update the system tray metrics" would cause a lot of people to damage their computers. If a lot of people are so incompetent they should not make reckless changes based upon a lack of information. I find your alarmist title out of all proportion to the complaint. Have you never heard of a Microsoft Patch Tuesday that actually brought company systems down and crippled normal commercial operations until I.T. support undid the damage ? The boy who cried wolf when there was no wolf lost his reputation so was not believed when there was a wolf.

I get what I can for Free - regardless of Quality

There is no way that a utility can discriminate between a folder with a left-over file and a folder with a portable stand-alone executable or a folder with a vital user document.

CCleaner will not try to clean drives other than C:\ unless :- You specifically INCLUDE their contents for cleaning ; OR Valid items to be cleaned APPEAR to be held on C:\ but are actually routed through Reparse Points or possibly Windows Libraries to other drives. So far as CCleaner is concerned it will clean my installed version of the Palemoon browser caches, and it is blissfully unaware of the reparse point which has relocated the cache to drive E:\. I doubt that Exclude E:\ work protect the cache if Windows is telling CCleaner that the cache is in the default C:\ drive. I suggest that klxdrt should use CCleaner Analyze to determine if it will attempt to clean something which he really knows is on a drive he wishes to protect.

I fear that you may have cloned. If only you had imaged. Please confirm what you did I can advise upon the use of Image backups to restore the operating system to the original drive or to restore to a brand new drive. I am not aware of anyone here that makes a habit of cloning, but some one may be able to advise. Macrium has two different capabilities :- Backup Image and Restore, which almost never at any time fails, and is a simple SOFTWARE operation which is ideal for the novice and myself, and I have a 1 TB backup drive which is holding several hundred backups that allow me to restore Windows to any month in the last few years; Clone, which is HARDWARE intensive for those who enjoy hot-swapping their drives, and have understanding that the disk identities will get messed up if you do not disconnect the source drive at the right time. I consider Cloning to be a one-way trip into disaster. The "Destination Disk" receives an identical "Disk Identity" as the "Source Disk", and if you reboot/power up with identical disks then Windows throws a "hissy fit" and will knock off-line the drive you wanted to use. Clone is far too much bother for me to think about Clone consumes a complete drive and you need a long shelf of drives if you make and keep a clone once a month for a few years.

If Ztree can delete those System Volume Information files then it is too dangerous to be in your hands. You might hack vital bits and pieces out of your Restore Point System. It would be much safer to choose which recent Restore Points might be of value and to delete the older ones by using CCleaner / Tools / System Restore.