rojay

Thanks MrRon and Augeas, If memory serves, I had checked both Deep Scan and Scan for Non-Deleted Files ( I should have mentioned this - sorry!) About 15 minutes after my last post, the scan stopped of its own volition and reported 90350 files found (I have no idea why it took so long). I was able to recover all but 64 files. However, despite selecting the option for preservng the directory structure, the directory structure was not recovered. So now I have about 90286 files, all in one directory. While this is GREAT progress, is there a way to re-establish the directory structure? These are all photographs that have been cataloged through the directory structure; it would be a serious amount of work to recatalog them all. Would it help to rescan (with different options e.g uncheck Deep Scan) and try again?

yes, there is activity being logged in the Task manager, and the "current progress" counter is still increasing (now at 4732% and counting). Piriform, can you give me some advice?

I have a different problem with a 1TB external drive. On a recent boot, the drive was detected as having bad sectors, so CHKDSK was run automatically to analyze and fix the errors. CHKDSK reported many errors, which it promptly fixed. When I subsequently reboot, I get an MFT corrupt error and can't access the disk. Enter Recuva. I entered Advanced mode and do a deep scan to try to recover the files. Recuva starts promptly and for the first hour, showed "Current progress - 0%; estimated time left - 10 days" Over the next 5 days, the progress bar slowly increases to about 51% (with 31010 files found). At that point, progress jumped to 110% (estimated time left - 5 days). I keep waiting, and after another 4 days the progress has gone to 144% (or so). Today it jumped to 214%; estimated time left is now fluctuating rapidly between 1 day and 22 days (or so). Progress is still slowly increasing. Is it doing anything? Should I kill it, or keep waiting? Its been running for about 2 weeks - is there any chance of recovering the files? tech specs: I am running WinXP, SP3 with Recuva 1.38.504; screen shot attached . Any help would be appreciated, rob