deep scan estimated time 39 days and other findings

Recuva
1

Hi all,

I'm new to this forum. Just downloaded the latest Recuva a couple of days ago.

Recuva v1.42.544, Dell Vostro 3500, 3gb ram, win 7 64-bit, running only recuva, a browser and outlook.

Found out the following

1 Was able to recover files displayed as unrecoverable. The initial normal scan found some files that were deleted by ccleaner (pseudorandom string file name) and set to unrecoverable in Recuva. Was able to recover these successfully. I suspect the file has been overwritten by subsequent files and recuva is retrieving whatever was there.

2 secure overwrite does not work. I select the file mentioned in 1. Did a secure overwrite (1pass and 7pass). Does not work. Am still able to preview and recover file. Tried with another similar file but with status 'Very poor' and did a secure overwrite (7pass). The status was changed to 'unrecoverable', but I'm still able to recover the file and view the contents.

3 deep scan does not work. Yes technically it does run, but in practice it does not. It takes an absurdly long time to do and consumes all the available physical RAM (3gb) and page file (2gb). See attached screenshot. I end up killing the process (yes i clicked cancel two hours earlier and it still runs on and on)

Conclusion, cursory scans are fine to see what you have forgotten to erase. Anything more than that, caveat emptor, in this case, you paid nothing, expect nothing.

post-62592-0-23591100-1342064690_thumb.png

2

1) You can always read (i.e recover) data from clusters on the disk. Whether that data is what you expect it to be, or 'a file', is another matter. The comment column, or the Info panel, will give you some idea of what you're recovering.

2) It does. When you attempt a secure overwrite what does the info box say afterwards? In Advanced Mode select a file and look at the header contents in the Info panel. If there is data there (not a string of zeroes) then securely overwrite the file. The data will have changed to zeroes, unless the info box says otherwise.

3) It does. Or should I say it tries to within the limitations of the particular pc. I don't know how large your disk is but you found 4.5 million files before cancelling Recuva. Recuva will handle large disks and large amounts of data, but needs corresponding amounts of resources. (Someone cleverer than me can analyse the info in your pic, but there are some big numbers in there.)