Structure

Did you delete the folder (and contents) to the recycler, and then empty that, or what? I did a delete/empty recycle bin, yes, but I haven't altered the drive I'm recovering from in any way since the delete. I believe the drive is FAT formatted. I'm using Windows 7. If Recuva doesn't alter the disk where it is trying to recover data, then why is it that the initial scan showed the original pathnames, but now (after doing a full recovery without restoring directory structure) they're gone? I'm starting to think that whatever happened, the directory structure is permanently lost. At least I still have all the files, even if I'm going to have to sort them into some kind of structure by hand now.

What drive letters were you trying to Recuva from and where were you saving what was recovered ? It was F:\. It's an external hard drive, and I was recovering to a different external. What was the total size you wished to recover? 62 gigs in 12,000 files. What was the total size of the partition that lost the data? 465 gigs How did the data get lost in the first place ? Simple (accidental) delete operation. It's not a damaged disk or anything, just a huge folder that should not have been deleted. See, the first time I ran the scan, Recuva showed the full, original pathnames for all the files it discovered. I should have selected, "restore directory structure," but I didn't. Now, every time I re-scan, all the path names are as I said above. If Recuva doesn't actually change the disk from which it is recovering data, then is the pathname issue I'm seeing purely cosmetic? If I go back and attempt another recovery--and this time select "restore directory structure"--will Recuva still be able to restore the original directory structure?

I jumped right in on using recuva to recover my files. It found everything I lost immediately, so I went ahead with the recovery process. Here is the problem: I jumped in so quick that I started the recovery process without first finding and turning on the "restore directory structure" option. After the initial recovery, it appears I have all my lost files, but now all the files I am trying to recover show a path of "F:\Recycle Bin\[chinese characters?]" on a second scan with recuva, so the original directory structure appears to have been destroyed. Did Recuva overwrite the original directory structure in the recovery process, or is it still possible to recover the original pathnames for all the files so I can restore the directory structure even though I accidentally did not do so the first time? It would be a giant pain (read: nigh impossible) to restore the original directory structure by hand. Any suggetsions for this problem? Will a deep scan recover the original pathnames?