Can It Do THIS?

Recuva
1

Here is the (sad) story.

Elderly mother of a friend, who was:

Using PC, and made a mistake and selected EVERYTHING, and chose to DELETE all the files on her system.

Due to an error. She did not really want to trash her system!

It went merrily on to do what she asked, until enough Windows system files were wiped out that the system crashed.

So, I pulled the HD, and stuck it in another system.

I see that there are about 20,500 deleted files, and of them about 3/4 are intact.

I did this with some other software ( PC Tools Recover Files).

However, this is what I need to do now:

1) Select all files that are intact and complete, AND:

2) Save them to another drive, IN their folders and full paths.

I really want to recover the paths, not just have a huge pile of files to sort through by hand.

Or:

3) Recover everything back to the same drive. "Make it good again"

4) I would REALLY like it if I could recover the Windows there so it boots too, but that is only hoping!

Can Recuva do that? Can anything do that?

Thanks in advance to any who have ideas and suggestions and help!

2

Never recover files to drive you're recovering from (unless it's 1 file) because you increase the risk of corrupting your deleted files.

As for repairing the operating system you're probably better off re-installing, all version of Windows has a repair or re-install option so you can keep your old files intact.

What version of Windows was the machine running??

Richard S.

3

In Advanced mode, check Restore Folder Structure in Options/Actions. This will recreate the original file structure within the folder you're restoring to. Also a right click in the left-hand panel, select View Mode/Tree View will show you the folder structure before restoration.

I don't think you have the slightest chance of recovering the Windows O/S, but after you've done all your recovering you could give it a try, you have nothing to lose.

4

OK, all pretty much good news so far.

One more question then:

On the old hard drive in the Recycle I see 3 recycle sets.

One of them is dated from the day of the accident.

It contains 524 folders, and is about 74GB in size.

This seems to contain almost everything that was deleted.

Will Recuva figure out the folders and paths for those files?

Or should I simply re-install the system, then copy that back to

the Recycler on the new install and try and recover/restore from that?

Pardon me, but I have not done this before, so I am learning!

5

How do you see 74 GB ?

If this is NOT via RECUVA but a simple Windows Explorer look at what you have,

then just possibly it holds perfect copies of everything that was deleted.

If I had this disaster I would use Teracopy to copy those 74 GB to another drive,

and probably also a full disc clone or disc copy (sector by sector) to create fall back positions

(i.e. a way to cancel out any mistakes in what I do next.)

And then get further advice before doing anything else.

Augeas and others can give you far better advice than I can,

and he may have some simply solutions that would have been suggested in his first post if you had previously mentioned the existence of 74 GB.

Alan

6

Leter edit: After reading Alan's post and re-reading Maurice's I don't know whether the recycler has been deleted or not. If not I would back them up as Alan suggested, then try to use Windows to restore the deleted items to their original folders. Then back them up with the data structure intact.

This is what I originally posted in the belief that M was looking at deleted files:

No, Recuva will create a path to the recycler, not to where they were before they were deleted.

I don't think that copying them back to the recycler would work. In XP there is an index file in the recycler that keeps tabs on all the entries, and you won't be able to update that. In Vista/etc there is no index file but two entries for each deleted file, so you will be missing those as well. In any case I think you will have lost the original path info, so even if you could copy them to the recycler, and Windows updates the index file or second file for you, if you then try to restore them they will be restored to where you put the Recuva recoveries, if you see what I mean.

7

How do I see 74GB?

I have the drive mounted in another Window3s machine.

I use a tool called Total Commander, and I navigate to the Recycler Folder

I select all items and ask it how much space those folders and files occupy, and it tells me.

Hi Alan.

It likely DOES hold all the deleted items.

Again, the problem occurred when the user selected EVERYTHING on her drive and selected to "Delete" it.

Windows started deleting items, and kept doing that until it crashed as system files disappeared!

If you READ my first post I wrote:

"So, I pulled the HD, and stuck it in another system.

I see that there are about 20,500 deleted files, and of them about 3/4 are intact.

I did this with some other software ( PC Tools Recover Files)."

I can see all the files, as they are in the recycler.

There are about 20,000 files in these 624 folders in this one recycler set.

However, the recycler does not show me their paths, their names, or the folder and trees that were deleted.

I already made a copy of what was left to another drive.

8

The Recycler was not deleted.

However enough Windows files WERE deleted that the machine will not boot Windows, immediaately complaining that HAL.DLL is missing.

I know better than to simply copy that file back, as I know each file I wrote to that drive will overwrite other things.

So, YES, all the deleted files I want back are in the Recycler.

And YES, I likely need to reinstall WinXP on that drive, in that machine.

And YES, I can do a maintenance or recovery install to preserve the installed apps.

But I can not do that if I can not recover all the files in that Recycler.

I need a way to take those files in the Recycler,

back them up to the other HD, and then to preserve their path info so as to copy them back

to the right paths on the newly recovered machine after the Windows re-install.

Preferably with some sorting ability.

We are talking about over 20,000 files!

9

Now that I suspect I have added enough details to make the situation clear, I hear a crashing silence.

Leading me to believe that I am STILL "screwed".

10

Sometimes the complete strangers that are trying to help you have some other aspect of their lives that drags them away from the screen for an hour or so. So please try not to rub them up the wrong way.

I assume that you can't see the recycler, or any files, using Explorer? So therefore you couldn't try to restore a deleted file from the recycler?

As I have no personal experience of this problem, and I suspect Alan doesn't either, we can only make suggestions how to fix it.

Can you access the recycler either with your other software or by using a command prompt window? Have you made a secure copy of the recycler? Rename it to avoid confusion.

Can you copy the recycler and its contents to another non-system drive that doesn't have a recycler already? Or has one that's not important, and can be overwritten? If you can, try to restore one or more files from the recycler. It may be that this will want to restore the files to the c drive, from whence they came. If so you know this will work and you can repair the c drive. If the repair has lost the recycler contents, restore all the files in this way.

I don't know whether a Windows reinstall/repair will leave the recycler alone. I've looked on Google but can't find the info.

That's about all I can think of at the moment, apart from investigating buying some repair software or sone data recovery assistance. I shan't post again until tomorrow morning.

11

No, Really, I was not , just noticing the conversation was going around in a circle.

I *did* give the info in the first place.

As for my mistreatment of innocent volunteers, I apologize.

Bear in mind I only came here as none of the commercial software,

including the paid for version of Piriform, could answer my question about this

situation, in the first place.

Anyway, I am making some progress now:

I can get at the old Recycler.Bin

In it one will find files, however that tells me little where they belong.

In doing some more reading and Googling I discovered about the INFO2 file,

in a Recycle.Bin directory.

Inside INFO2 we can see the file names, WITH THEIR PATHS!

Yes, I backed everything up AND i cloned the disk image to start with, just in case!

So:

I have the files I need.

I have a file containing their names and their paths.

I suppose at this time I could write some PERL script to parse these to a flat file.

Then, mounted on a Linux machine I can do a batch copy of files as needed.

Still, I am REALLY surprised that none of these various file recovery programs

seem prepared to deal with an orphaned Recycle.Bin!

Then Fate smiled, and I found this:

http://code.google.com/p/rifiuti2/

It seems rifiuti2 is a tool for reading the INFO2 files, and the equivalents in a Windows 2008, Vista, or Windows 7 systems,

and allowing output to XML.

"Analysis of Windows Recycle Bin is usually carried out during Windows computer

forensics. Rifiuti2 can extract file deletion time, original path and size of

deleted files and whether the deleted files have been moved out from the

recycle bin since they are trashed. It supports the INFO2 file format found in

Windows up to Window XP as well as the new file format found in Vista."

Yay!

Still some work ahead, but at least I can see the light now.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

12

There are no Paid versions of Piriform Softwares. It is completly freeware. If you have paid for any software you are given the choice of directly contacting the developers and getting hands on aid from them (as opposed to posting on the forum)

Glad you were able to solve your issue

NdC

13

Good to know.

Thanks for the kind words, Nergal.

Peace and all the best to you!

14

Yes, good to see some progress. I would still try the Windows repair and see if the recycler can be retained or reinstated. It would be far easier to use Windows to restore the files if you can. Good luck.

15

A possible solution may be "Windows Recovery Console" which is free by M.S. and available to download from many places.

I have no personal experience of this, and will "never" (hopefully) need this.

I do use ERUNT to make a daily backup of the whole registry for the comfort of knowing I can cancel out any major disaster in the registry.

ERUNT backups can be easily restored from Windows when Windows will boot up.

ERUNT readme.txt notes "Added Windows Recovery Console support" since v1.1d, 07/07/2004.

If Windows Recovery Console does not require Bootable Windows to restore the registry,

you may find Windows Recovery Console can assist with recovery of contents in the Recycle Bin.

Alan

16

All good points.

At this stage I am exploring just which files were needed to allow make Windows installer

think that a repair install is allowed or possible.

Whatever that file was, it is no longer in the Windows directory.

So far all it does is ask if I want a new install in the /WINDOWS path,

and warns me it will overwrite what is already there.