northridge

Thanks guys. I guess I could have found out that stuff eventually just by trial and error, but I'm too impatient. Can you also tell me if defragging overwrites deleted files? As far as I understand the mechanics of it, defragging moves files to clear spaces: so it will overwrite the "empty space" left by a file designated as deleted. Or am I way of the mark in my thinking? Thanks again.

After a four hour scan I foolishly switched to Advanced mode and now have to click each jpeg title to see the image: I want to switch back to Wizard mode so that I can see them all as thumbnails so I can choose them quickly and easily. How?And every time I click a file to recover it asks me where I want to recover it to: can I not set a default location?

No answer on this? "So my question is - does Recuva "look up" previous scans/attempts (sorta like like going to a temp file or a cookie) and use that, or does a scan start completely fresh with no reference whatsoever to previous attempts or files previously found?"

I am glad that my adventures have helped some folk. Q-dos: if the stuff is important than I would persist: if you got to 83% in 3 days you are doing fine: I was stuck at 9% for 5 days then it suddenly finished. However, I must raise a serious caveat here and would like to hear an official answer. After completing the scan the results were considerably smaller than I had expected - based on the time taken and the expected amount of junk - and here?s the thing: I had previously aborted two scans after the scan had apparently stopped at 9% and the "time remaining" showed 3 or more days: I really didnt think I wanted to wait that long. I became familiar with the files that showed after the two aborts. After finally finishing a scan I was surprised to see only a few more files than I had previously recovered - there was about 10% more, if that. So my question is - does Recuva "look up" previous scans/attempts (sorta like like going to a temp file or a cookie) and use that, or does a scan start completely fresh with no reference whatsoever to previous attempts or files previously found? Thanks.

Less than two hours after posting I saw movement in my left eye and lo and behold, progress was at 80% and suddenly the scan had completed. There must be thousands upon thousands of files: what a fine program. Thanks guys.

Running a deep scan for pictures on a 2 year old laptop, and after 4 days the progress counter has stopped at 9% but the time left continues and is currently at 23 days. I would like to know whether, once the time left has stabilised, whether that be tomorrow or next month, the actual scan will resume from its stopped/paused state or will it be unlikely to resume due to the size of the task ahead? Im not asking whether its "worth doing" but whether the program will actually finish a task of this size and produce the results. Many thanks

Thanks.

A deep scan on just one of my laptop partitions is going to take days, it says, so finding and overwriting sensitive files seems impossible as I really need to use the thing. So what is the best alternative: format, reinstall OS and all my "live" data (which will overwrite a lot of stuff, right?) then overwriting the free space with CC? And doing repeated formats - does that make a difference? Or is there another way? And what about the paging file? I know it exists but dont know what its for: does it hold data? Will it get formatted then overwritten too if I do it the way I asked? Thanks

Thank you.

Okay, thanks, I too am clearer about this now. Just FYI, in case you havent come across this before, the actual files were never encrypted - the encryption program creates a "virtual drive" that is opened by a password (and can be hidden from view if the user chooses) - the files themselves are simply locked inside this. So, seeing as I have files that apparently cannot be overwritten, and there are lots, I have another idea, but need clarification. If I copy the files I want to another drive, will other stuff get copied too - like that dreadful and mysterious "Recycler" whos objective seems purely to make life difficult, deleted files, incomplete files, etc? For example: I copy or cut/paste folder "A" to another drive: all the "active" files will be copied, but what about everything that was deleted from that folder? If I can create a "clean" new drive then junking the old one is the quickest and easiest solution. Thank you for your support.

Obviously we have a communication problem. I must be more careful with the words I use to describe what I am doing and what I want to do. The files are on an encrypted and password protected part of an HD. As far as I understand the files themselves were not encrypted - just hidden until that part of the HD was "opened" with the password. After "opening" the encrypted part of the HD and scanning for deleted files I see, using thumbnail view, some images and some "no preview available". The images are clear and identifiable,and have their original filenames. Mousing over them they read "Size - 279Kb (for example) - Status unrecoverable". File sizes range from less than 100kb to nearly 4,000kb. Selecting Secure Overwrite I get Not Overwritten. Even though it reads "Status - Unrecoverable" right-clicking gives me the option to Recover: so I recover them to another location, secure overwrite with other files, and delete the randomly-named results. When I scan the HD again the files are still there.

No help on this? What do I do when I try to overwrite a file and afterwards it says "Not overwriiten"?

Obviously I explained badly - sorry. I ran Recuva to check for files that had been deleted, not erased, in order to erase them. I want to erase them but they all say "not overwritten". The files were originally on an encrypted drive. Unfortunately I dont remember whether I deleted them directly from the open encrypted drive or moved them to another location or the recycle bin before deleting. They show up as recovered files: I want to overwrite them, but cannot.

I deleted files from an encrypted drive whilst the drive was "open". I have recovered them - again with the drive open - and tried to overwrite, but they cannot be overwritten. Is there a way to resolve this?