Found deleted files, but I cant use them?

Recuva
1

I deleted 5 videos from my SDcard and immediately realized I shouldn't have. I didn't write anything else to the card, just went straight to Recuva. I located the files (and many others), but Recuva says that they have been overwritten by an older deleted video?!?

Example: GOPR0259.mp4 has been overwritten with GOPR0120.mp4, where 0259 is the one I'm trying to recover and 0120 was deleted months ago. All of the most recently deleted items say this. However, all older items that were deleted days/months prior are not overwritten and are completely recoverable. (How are recently deleted videos already overwritten by older, already deleted videos?)

I recovered the items that I needed to a new folder on my PC. They wont play. When I load them into video editing software I get the correct time of each file, but no video or sound.

Is there anything that can be done?

2

This is, unfortunately, a quite frequently seen problem, I can even see it on my flash drives. I believe that SD cards are formatted to some version of FAT. I think it's something to do with the way the file cluster information in the FAT is modified on file deletion - or the way Recuva interprets this information. Fragmented files, as videos commonly are, seem more susceptible to this error.

I don't know if you can recover your files. The FAT cluster list appears invalid, and a deep scan will probably fail to recover fragmented files intact. This may also be the reason why your recovered file won't play.