mr don
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Posts posted by mr don
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Recuva works great! On drives & partitions it can detect.
One feature I would love to see is the ability to scan for a "lost" partition (Recuva cannot recover from drives it cannot see!).
It happens at times, that the NTFS or FAT32 MFT becomes corrupted, causing the drive to suddenly appear as "RAW" & blank!
This is very frustrating, because sometimes that represents hundreds of gigs of files! Can you add the ability to scan for "lost" partitions so the user can select a partition to recover, then start the recovery from that partition Recuva found? You can download a demo of Handy Recovery to see what I mean!
Sometimes that is the difference in being successful & having 0 files to recover at all!
Thanks!
P.S. I intend to check & see if Recuva can recover from password protected user accounts. I know Handy Recovery can, & it amazes me that in windows, a password protected account simply generates a "access denied" or some message like that when you left click the password protected user account, in addition to showing the properties as blank/0 mb when you right click that user & choose properties! However, when you enter the password & log-in, it seems fine & it has "all" the space back?
Running Handy Recovery makes it easy to recover from password protected accounts that either you don't have the password to, or their password protected account became corrupted so that it no longer "logs in" like it used to. I do hope Recuva has this feature, so I will check later on.
Thanks!
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Hello,
Recuva is as close as I've come to finding a perfect utility. It does exactly what it says, does it efficiently and quickly. Does it way better than most of it's competitors (most of which you have to pay for). So how can you improve on perfection?
If only it had an option to run without needing user intervention? There have been times when I wanted to run it on a machine. I knew what type of files I wanted to find, the dates they were deleted and which drive it was on. But I wanted to do this in the background or in the night or just schedule it, but I could not use Recuva. I had to use 'PhotoRec', which did what I needed but I'd have preferred to use Recuva.
You already have a config/ini file. I should be able to put the recovery directory and file types to recover in there . The only issue would be choosing the filesystem to scan. Most times it would be 'C:' drive. Hopefully if you implement this I would also be able to choose other filesystems or USB drives!!
The one other nice to have (or 'Holy Grail' even) is scanning network mounted drives!!
Thank you in advance. I look forward to the PERFECT utility.
I agree. The ability to set a default file type to look for would be very nice, along with setting a default dates deleted, etc. Perhaps they will also make it to be able to select a default drive as well!
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In the dropdown menu located in the Defrag button there should be a "clean temp files then defrag" or "CCleaner>Defrag". I feel this way because before you defrag you want to kill those wasteful temp files. Defraggler would have to detect if there is a CCleaner installation for this to work.
Not necessarily. CCleaner could be built into Defraggler, & it could run before defragging. It could be updated with each version of Defraggler! Having a built in version would eliminate the need for a check/download if they did not have it!
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Hy All!
I only have one suggestion: Defraggler should use more buffer memory. I think it's unacceptable, that it took about 8 minutes to defrag about 270 files - 87 megabytes! I made a new system disc from a harddrive, i used it only for storaging before. Well it had such noises, that i never heard earlier. Scraching, tearing, clacking noises. It was tooooo much seeking for 87 megabytes. (i made my registration here, and it was still working. 87 megabytes)
Wouldn't it be easier to sort the file pieces, if they were read into a big buffer (lots of [smaller] files read in), and than written out in one step each after another, without that much seek? I wouldn't mind if it takes 2 or 3 hundred of megabytes from the ram (or more!), just don't shorten the lifespan of the harddrive, with the unnecessary seeks.
The hard drive is a western digital wd4000aajs, not a high speed model, but reliable. First partition of the drive. 9,3 gigabytes of 30 gb used. All smart data is ok, so the drive should be ok. It can create truecrypt partitions with 80 mb/s, so the sequential speed is also ok.
Thank You for reading this post!
Xiau.Ling
Hungary
This is an interesting request. You mean, kind of like Nero burning rom buffers for a CD/DVD + the software buffer? Nero uses a buffer to speed things along for buffer under-run protection. It would be very interesting to see an adjustable buffer in Defraggler, say, from 0 mb for low mem systems, up to 500 MB for high end machines. This would dramatically speed things up if smaller chunks are read into memory, then written back out.
The only downside I can think about in doing that is what if there were a power failure & 500 mb in mem were lost? Perhaps it can copy things over in mem, then relocate to another section of the drive. Once successfully copied, delete the source, then prepare to move those files back in a contiguous manner! Also, I did have defraggler lock-up recently on a laptop I was working on. This was not the fault of defraggler, nor did defraggler cause this. The laptop harddisk had bad sectors, so every time Defraggler attempted to read or write from that area, the laptop would freeze! I corrected this by marking off the bad sectors into a 3rd partition & then deleting the 3rd partition once into windows.
So now they have the C:/Windows partition & also a D:/Multimedia partition with all their music, pics, vids. I tested with defraggler when I was done, & it ran perfectly after quarantining those 5 GB of areas with bad sectors! I did make sure to back up all I could before the re-partitioning, & it took about 50 reboots because on some areas, I had to try to copy a single file at a time to identify sectors that were back (translate/it would lock up, so I would have to reboot).
Everything works great now, although I recommended they burn their important data to permanent media, & get ready to get a new HD if that one goes out!
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Recuva can take a while to scan. And a whole scan can take an eternity. You should be able to pause in case you need the RAM for something else.
Agreed...
Defraggler has a pause, AVG has a pause, I have long been wanting a pause on Recuva when it is going to take a while...
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This is Not a request to allow multi-disk defrag simultaneously...... rather...
How about allowing the user to check a box for which disks to defrag sequentially...
one after another... when one disk then to go onto the next.
Norton Utilities operates this way and is a key differentiator between it and the
built in defrag tool.
This would allow the user to set it, check the boxes and let it run tru the system.
You guys would then be heroes!
Otherwise, pls keep up your good work!
Bob
aka Rolloutman
I would love the option to defrag all 8 drives at once, simultaneously... And be able to save the settings to a .ini file to use low priority/single core/300 MHZ max or something like that, for defragging drives!
Definitely a great time saver. It is one of the few things I wish that Defraggler had! We have multi core processors, multi everything else, so why not multi drive defrag?
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Don, I can't believe you're asking this.
I only ask because, in some cases if it is true that a deep scan with recuva is unable to recover the files that are fragmented, I was wondering if it was even possible to defrag the "deleted" files so that it could recover it. Of course, this may be next to impossible, but I was at least exploring the possibility in resurrecting files from the dead.
I have heard that there are some data recovery techniques that I am sure defraggler probably does not incorporate, but may be nice to know. Just like the highways we travel on, tracks on a harddisk have the middle, inside, outside, & underside "ghost" images from what I am told. A lot of drives have a way you can plug into them to sidestep normal disk drive operations if you know what you are doing, & cause it to read slightly off center the track to recover image information. Or, so I am told.
In addition, there is electron scanning microscope tech, + the ability of certain softwares to guess that if this is a 1 now, it used to be a 0 bit before, & arrive at what used to be there, even though it may be overwritten now. Have heard that some utilities may be able to reach several layers deep, but it could take a long time.
The problem being of course, I don't have an electron microscope to test this, nor some other... ahem! advanced machinery! I do know that one of the best recovery programs I have used so far (handy recovery) is able to recover files even from XP/Vista password protected user accounts, & that if you cannot recover files with it, it probably cannot be recovered.
It also has the ability to scan for deleted partitions. Recuva does a nice job, but it does not scan for deleted partitions. Why would you want this, you ask? It happens that sometimes you plug a drive in & the MFT can become corrupted in a fat32 or NTFS (yes, even though NTFS stores 2 copies of the MFT) and cause it to show the drive as raw, instead of fat32 or ntfs.
Having the ability to scan for deleted partitions aids data recovery because after all, if you cannot see the partition you just lost, then how are you going to recover it? To me, this seems almost miraculous.
I said all that to say this. I think the coders here are whizes. I believe if anyone can pull it off, they can! I am not in any way suggesting that defragging deleted files will definitely aid recovery, but it is something I was thinking seriously about when I read directly on this site that it recuva could not recover fragmented deleted files.
Of course, perhaps if this is possible, I may have made a mistake & placed this in the wrong location. Perhaps a version of Recuva could be crafted, that upon failure to find the necessary files, it would ask if they wanted to defrag the deleted files & then do a data recovery scan? Perhaps have it do like defraggler, only a custom version specifically for Recuva & only for deleted files!
I do know a lot about some things, but I am not perfect of course, so if any of you know about this & what is possible/not possible to do, I would of course, love to know!
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CCleaner, Defraggler, Recuva, & Speccy are all terrific programs. On high end machines, it may not be necessary to use such high priorities or even more than a single core to accomplish the task.
Many chips come with multiple cores now, & I would love the ability to have a slider that you can adjust to only use 1 core, 2 cores, 3 cores, 4 cores etc!
Also, a slider to adjust priority from low, below normal, normal, above normal, high, & real time so that if you don't need anything but low, you don't use it!
If you could include an option to set the max MHZ a program can use, say, don't use more than 300 MHZ, that would be awesome as well. The ability to adjust the slider in increments of 100 MHZ from 100 to whatever the max is for your computer. This way, say, a program that doesn't need much CPU such as defraggler, can be set to use no more than it needs to run on low priority, in the background, single core, 300 mhz or so... Leaving the rest of the power for apps that really need it!
When you include these options, can you also include the option to save these settings in the .ini file so we can run it portably that way as well?
Thank you!
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I read that Recuva may not be able to recover deleted files that are fragmented when it is doing a deep scan to search for headers indicating a file exists in that region of the drive.
Is there any way to add an option to defraggler to defrag the "hidden" or deleted files so that recuva can recover them? I understand that defraggler normally only defrags "visible" or non-deleted files. If you include the option to defrag the "invisible", or deleted files, wouldn't recuva have a much better chance of recovering them?
Thanks!
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I read that Recuva may not be able to recover files that are fragmented when it is doing deep scan to search for headers that indicate files.
Is it better to run defraggler before doing a recovery, or will that make things worse?
Just wondering!
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Right.... Had tonnes of problems with the drive but the long and short of it is that I ended up doing a quick format on the drive... not a major issue, before it gets to 1% of scanning, Recuva finds over 51000 files
However, after a while, the PC gets a BSOD and reboots. Taking a look at the Windows event log, it seems that there has been hundreds of drive errors with bad blocks. As it's found the 51000 files, I presume that the data is not on these bad blocks and so I dont need to use Recuva to scan them.
Is there any way to tell Recuva to ignore the bad blocks?
Thanks in anticipation...
Formatting a drive in long format just checks for bad sectors / marks them bad if it finds them, & additionally generates a new Master File Table for windows that ignores the files that still exist. Quick format is the same, minus the bad sector check.
Finding data & being able to copy it are 2 diff things. I have worked on laptops that show files, pictures/videos etc that are on a bad sector but unable to copy those particular files (even with unlocker) due to it being directly in a bad sector on the disk drive. It is possible that files can be "found" but fail to copy. Just because it shows a file's location on the disk, does not always mean it is possible to copy that file. You can "move" the file to another place on the same drive a lot of times, but that just changes what location is pointing to the same data, not actually move the data. This is why if you choose "move" on a dataset that is in a corrupted sector, it appears to move it with no trouble, but you try to copy it & it fails.
Move does not actually move it if it resides on the same drive. The data stays in the same location, but the pointer to it gets updated. If you copy a file, it attempts to clone it, & this is where you run into problems. Also, if you choose "move" to another drive, partition etc, that does move the data as it is no longer able to just update the pointer to the data as the data is being taken off the drive!
Hope this helps!
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I've got a virtualbox win 95 (can't find my 3.1 discs) LOL I guess that doesn't count though
This will address several issues in 1 box:
- Win 98 has many probs, including corruption of files over 4 GB & doesn't run things in separate mem spaces like XP, Vista, Win 7 do, leading to crosslinked files that get truncated (deleted).
- It is not an error listing filehippo as the main server. This is to offload traffic from the piriform website to keep costs down as these are free programs & bandwidth costs $$$.
- Recuva is already portable. Save the settings to a .ini file under settings, then copy recuva.exe & the .ini file to your flash drive
- The top 2 entries under the reg cleaner in ccleaner cause the most problems, & if you want to be sure, sometimes the 3rd entry from the top can cause problems as well. I imagine it is far worse under windows 95/98/ME than under XP/Vista/Windows 7 as again, win 95/98/ME are very buggy/crash prone/do not run things in separate mem spaces, & have limited mem/harddisk size support!
Backup your reg if you want, but the top 3 entries on regcleaner are the ones that cause 95% of the problems encountered in registry cleaning.
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CONCLUSION
I found and used EASEUS Recovery tool which worked much better than Recuva. Unfortunately by the time I got to use it Windows had installed 7 updates even though I have set it to "ask me before installing". Also Norton updated twice as it was set to do. EASEUS found a number of older deletions but all recent were gone.
The lesson. As you said don't use Shift+Delete but let it go to the recycle bin.
If it does get permanently deleted then stop everything. Save nothing you are doing unless it its more important the lost file(s). Disconnect connection to the INTERNET. Maybe you can use a networked computer to access the problem one but for sure where the program requires a save do it to some kind of external drive.
There is a data recovery program called Handy Recovery that you can use. They have a free version on their website, but versions 3 & 4 work much better than the version 1 freeware. If you cannot recover it with that, it probably cannot be recovered. It will pull up files in the exact folder structure they are on your PC so you can find them faster. It also shows non-deleted in the tree as well.
It has the capability to recover, even from password protected user accounts that normal methods may fail on.
Hope this helps!
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I would love the ability to easily see if you have:
- A 32 bit or 64 bit CPU
- A 32 bit or 64 bit OS
- The ability to return the string ID on unknown hardware that is installed (note: I have no unknown hardware at the moment, but I have worked on systems that do)
- Automatically add the detected cache for a processor to XP so it can perform better. It is known that XP does not use the correct cache size for a processor. This utility correctly identifies the CPU L1 & L2 cache sizes, so a lot of users would get a LOT of performance boost if this utility gave the option to auto correct the size for XP so XP will use the on-chip cache properly!
The ability to backup the 5 main drivers that can give you problems, particularly on older machines with no recovery disks or no way to get the drivers off the web anymore would be a great bonus!
- Audio
- Video
- Ethernet card
- Internet (dialup card)
- USB (some adapters are non-MS)
The ability to print or save the information would be very nice as well.
Additionally, DXDiag also shows the following info:
- Current display resolution/bitrate/HZ (Ex: 1440 X 900 / 32 bit / 60 htz)
- If your PC has more than 1 core (dual, quad core, etc)
- System model (Ex: HP dc7600 convertible minitower)
- Version of DX
MSinfo32 shows:
- Bios version
- SM Bios version
- System name
- System drives & partitions / file system type / free space
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I have been using this max kick a** program for years.
Never had any issues what..so..ever.
In the latest version, my latest i7 920 desktop is running 4X longer with the same boxes ticked as my 8 year old piece of docked dell inspiron, on the Vista x64 side.
On the Windows XP x32 drive it runs fine.
On the RAID array on my desktop, I'm having horrid problems with the latest version, that I installed (as I recall) last weekend of 10/24/09.
The older version while I'm in the XP x32 side is purrrring right along.
At this point......I'm kinda hesitant to install/upgrade what's already working.
I have the default boxes ticked and installed the latest version right over the top of the old one, like I have always done.
Is anyone else having these issues, Please?
I ran across this post when I searched the forums 1st and do run malware bytes.
As far as I can tell and 95% sure, I am virus/malware/spyware/trojan free.
Other protective programs I use regularly:
Kaspersky 2010 Internet Security build 9.0.0.736 (the most over-protective, over-bearing of the bunch)
Windows Defender.....yes, I'm one of those: definitions updated daily from here, and a very use-ful weekly tool lately.
SpywareBlaster by javacool......proactive defense.
SUPERantispyware.
I hope that's enough information.
I surf with Mozilla Firefox version 3.5.4, and if you're a Mozilla advocate.....I'd suggest to get to version .4 soon: since the previous ones have multiple vulnerabilities.
Thanks in advance for any replies and since I'm new here: Hello Piriform Community!
Mr. sinewave
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Quick question:
How much difference can you tell performance wise with an i7 compare to a regular P4? I have a P4 3,200 MHZ dual core with 1 GB ram. Does i7 give you that much performance boost?
Also, the 64 bit versions of windows... Do you have any trouble with running 32 bit applications in 64 bit windows with 64 bit processors? Some claim certain 32 bit apps may slow up or crash/not run in 64 bit. Please let me know so I will know if I should go for Windows 7 64 or 32 bit!
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I noticed that yahoo seems to keep logs in the program files folder, in addition to a cache that acts kind of like the temp internet files folder, only it is used in yahoo.
Wonder if there is a way to remove that in the future? Maybe add a tick box to remove the following?
- Logs
- Cache
- Message Archives (perhaps a tick box next to each user name so they can select what user(s) to remove or leave?)
Thank you!
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I noticed that some files are no longer in the original file.
Example a pdf file for the automobile file was found in the file on what to do when upgrading to Windows 7.
This is not a problem that only occurs with pdf files, other types of files have been effected. These files when clicked on by either the right mouse button or double clicked by the left mouse button locks up Windows Explorer.
To get out of the lock up, I use Ctl+Alt+Del and choose the file. It says not responding and I click to close it out.
Closing it out helps but the only way to access or delete these files is with an eraser program that I have.
I first noticed this problem with the last version of Defraggler (Not the Newest one, that I havent't installed as yet).
I'm Using Windows XP Sp2 as I thought Sp3 might be the problem I removed it. However I don't know if the newest version of defraggler downloaded Oct 23, 2009 will help.
Can any one help? I don't know if I should continue to use defraggler !
This may be a problem with Defraggler, however, it may also be an indication that your harddisk is going bad.
It may have had trouble reading certain sectors & moved files to a location it can read better.
Check to see if your drive is damaged.
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After it gets about 5 minutes into the defrag its gets super heavy on one CPU. And I do have antivirus. It happens more often with larger files but with small files it stays at 15%.
You may want to check that your drive isn't going bad. A computer should not spike like that unless you have the following happening:
- Other programs running (OS or other programs updating in the background)
- Damaged files (increase # of tries to copy/move them)
- Damaged area of hard disk (Either defective, or starting to go bad. Difficulty reading & writing to this section of the drive)
- Malware or viruses (Causes various payloads of destruction. Some slow computers to a crawl)
- Damaged OS files (Over time, or numerous updates, OS files may become damaged, or sometimes updates cause problems with certain PC configs)
- Too many startup items, browser helper objects (All of them loaded at once can cause the PC to seek to use Virtual Ram, or the harddisk, which is the slower part of the PC)
- Overheating (Many users may overheat their laptop by starving the fans on the bottom for air. Be sure you allow room for them to run!)
Check that your PC is not in one of the above categories.
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It would be awesome if you made defraggler u3 compactible
ccleaner u3 is cool
i repair people computers using my u3 drive and having the world best
defrager at my side would be great!!
Defraggler already is portable.
Just copy the file to your U3 or flash drive. Include the .ini file if you chose save settings to ini.
Thanks, have a good day!
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I think, a message box like "Finished defrag" would be nice to inform the user that a defragmentation run has finished. Now it just silently re-enables the "Defrag" and "Analyze" buttons.
Other programs give you a full-screen sized reoprt of the defrag process. That's an overkill, but some message would be nice. Or maybe just a notification sound.
regards,
Mike
Some people may not like that. Maybe build in the option to tick whether they want to be alerted when it is done. Perhaps even build defraggler with "download" packs.
Meaning, why add colorblind support to Defraggler if someone does not use it, it would not be added to the download size & just add something that is useless to them. Perhaps be able to download the parts they want to use with Defraggler.
Say, downloadable:
- Language pack (for languages other than English, instead of installing all of them)
- Alerts (for users who really really want to add that)
- Colorblind support
Etc, etc!
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Was happily playing some computer games today and in the middle of one of them my hard drive started making a pretty big racket. Alt-Tabbed out and couldn't find any reason for this happening in my applications, looked up my processes and df.exe was eating up most of my processing power. Wasn't entirely sure it was defraggler at first, but obviously found out was.
Completely forgot that I had scheduled defrags cos my computers power supply broke and I've only just got a new one, but having never had a scheduled one actually end up running are they supposed to run with pretty much no notification that they're happening? Would be awesome if in the scheduling there was some way of having it so it only ran when not much processing power was being used, or possibly have it so it won't run when certain other programs are. Obviously at the end of the day it's my fault for forgetting it was set to run, but that'd be a cool little feature.
It would be insanely hard for it to tell when you are using what or what you would call "busy".
How about an alert that it is about to run the scheduled defrag. Please click ok?
Or, even better, make a version that will allow you to schedule it to auto-run defraggler with no questions asked, or to set it to prompt you before running. This would solve everyone's problems.
Then, if they have it set to run, but prompt user first, the user would have to click ok to start it.
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in addition to the file extension filter, what about being able to move entire directories to the end of the drive?
could be implemented with wild cards in the existing extension filter:
C:\USER\ADMIN\DOCS\*
moves whole 'DOCS' directory
I think that is a wonderful idea.
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Defraggler may be accurate on the number of fragments on the drive, but it seems to display a very misleading percentage.
Drives with lots of files are especially vulnerable. I am guessing that this happens because even if there are say, only 30 fragmented files on some systems, that though fragmentation is low, it still has to move a lot of files to consolidate files + free space. The average user does not know that it takes time for say, 30 GB of non-fragmented files to be moved along with the fragmented files, since it just displays, hey, you have 30 fragments!
Great! Should be done in no time!
Perhaps they should include 2 percent bars? Time to completion along with percent fragmented so the user can get a better idea of what is going on?
I love defraggler, but I do think that the users do need a better way to tell why progress is taking so long when there are so few fragments sometimes!
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I have large disk drives (mirrored). Would be nice to have upper portion of defraggler provide scroll bars so one can scroll through the defrag "squares" to see what is going on. Even dragging the bar down doesn't show all the blocks that are being defrag'd.
That sounds neat, or at least a window showing a preview of the files & folders being moved, maybe show the next ones in highlighted that it is thinking of moving right after it moves those!
Registry Cleaner
in CCleaner
Posted
If I remember correctly, CCleaner up till version 1.41 was coded for windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP etc.
The newer versions may have trouble with the way they handle registry cleaning on an older OS like Windows 98. I ran the latest version with no problems on my XP SP2 machine. I am assuming that you are trying to use a newer version of CCleaner on an older OS like Windows 98.
If this is so, you may be able to run version 1.41 or so as it is still the 1 X series. Posting your OS + SP # would really help!
Thanks!