What, and go through all those files again??
Nergal, that is what I've just finished doing after 3-4 days of work.
Please note I made multiple edits in my previous post make sure you read them all.
to whom was you query directed? (sorting by path is the best method of quickly finding the files you want and bulk grabbing files (if you sort by path you can grab all your user folders (documents and settings folder) in one fell swoop.
Nergal, I agree but many of those files probably have a path longer than what recuva needs. I have just spent 3-4 days again sorting and checking. I am beyond frustration and patience. I only went for music, movies, books and photos/videos. Never occured to me to get appData files.
Am I wrong to assume that even though I am using this machine, that if a file has a green next to it and says excellent that it is recoverable?
Can I group all the green files that I have selected into one group and then go through them?
I would really like to get something back.
Also, I just did a check of some path names and the longest look to be about 65-70 characters. So, if there is one path too long it will cancel the whole operation? Is there a setting to ignore paths too long? That seems to be a good idea, no?
Alan this is a recovery situation on a live computer, this "advice" may be the worst ,most irresponsible thing you've ever typed on this site.
I never said it was a good option
I suggest that In practise it might not cause much loss in this situation, based upon these assumptions :-
The external drive of 3 TB suggests there may be more than 1 TB of user data to recover from a system drive that may exceed 1 TB in capacity ;
XP Home occupied less than 6 GB out of a 12 GB partition C:\ on my Laptop, and was on the fast end of the HDD,
Defraggler shows me that after at least one year without defragging there is less than 1 GB that is in the last 6 GB of C:\
which suggests that had C:\ been 1 TB of then only 0.1% of the deleted (formatted) user data space would have been over-written by the normal re-writing of Windows files.
I do however agree that the less it is used the better.
It would be good to install Windows on a different HDD,
and only connect the existing HDD as a secondary HDD (or external HDD) for reading/recovery.
An equivalent effect via software instead of hardware, is to create a FORENSIC image backup of partition C:\,
but this would involve a very steep learning curve to get it right.
N.B.
Yes, I did appreciate Schroedinger's cat.
Whats the point of "It would be good to install Windows on a different HDD,
and only connect the existing HDD as a secondary HDD (or external HDD) for reading/recovery." if I can't recover the data?
Your suggestions do nothing to help in my current situation, ie. waiting and trying to figure out how to get this software to recover the checked data right now before the whole page disappears again.
The point is that what data has not yet been destroyed would be preserved until such time as either Recuva will be enhanced to recover those files that do not exceed the length limit,
or you find alternative software which is better adapted to your situation.
If you must "recover the checked data right now" then the best you can do is uncheck the items on the longest path, and try and repeat until you exclude all the excessive length items.
Have you reread and studied all of Nergal's posts ?
I've decided to group the data into music, photos etc and then click 'state' and then go block by block recovering it. I figure if I come across that error popup again I can find the culprit/s easier. Although I must admit, I don't know really how to go about discerning which file path is too long until I come to one.
So, what do I look for if a path is too long? I have music grouped by path and the first 60% was recoverable, but the rest of it exceeds the path length. A typical line is ACDC - TNT.mp3 C:\All from the old J file now\All Music\ACDC\MiscACDC
While some of the ones that were accepted were much longer than this. So, what determines the path length?
I am preparing a reply that may help you, probably after lunch
So, what do I look for if a path is too long? I have music grouped by path and the first 60% was recoverable, but the rest of it exceeds the path length. A typical line is ACDC - TNT.mp3 C:\All from the old J file now\All Music\ACDC\MiscACDC
While some of the ones that were accepted were much longer than this. So, what determines the path length?
for that 40% create a new folder on the drive you are recovering to call it "bob" or whatever
go into recuva options and turn of recover folder structure
recover that 40 to the bob folder
Alan seems to have taken a 12 hour lunch (how do I get one of them)
I took two lunch breaks.
In between I had to rework my solution which was tedious to document and worse to understand.
Then I produced a single line batch command which is posted here :-
Wow Alan. I can't Appreciate enough the time and effort you have provided! I am daunted by that...
I have been going through things by file types, music, pics and it seems to be working well and not that tedious compared to the whole shebang at once. So far, I have recovered 219gbs of music and 54 gbs of pics. I will try the other categories one by one and see the results. One thing I would like to recover but don't know if I can cherry pick it is my mozilla bookmarks folder.
As expected, this Recuva software works great. It even separates like files into the same folder. Something the software used at the computer store wouldn't do. Impressive to say the least.
You are welcome
Alan
Just to clarify a couple of points:
'What about files repeated more than once, will the recovery put files of the same name into the folder?' Yes, duplicate file names will have a [2], [3] etc. suffix.
'If a file has a green next to it and says excellent that it is recoverable?' Recuva will 'recover' the data that's in the clusters the filename point to, whether that is your treasured file or simply garbage. It has no way to tell the difference. A green file means that the data is not at present overwritten with another file. It could have been previously, so green does not guarantee that valid data will be returned (but you have no choice but to try).
I've forgotten now, but are you running a deep scan and are recognisable file names being returned, or files with numerical names?
It seems that files of the same name will go in together in the same folder. That is, I have music and book files of the same size but with a different path name and they all go into the same folder. I am currently picking out just one of each to save to my ext drive.
You are correct in your second point. But, so far at least, the files I choose to listen to or watch have been perfect. But again, it's hardly a valid sample quantity to know for sure.
At this point all I really care about is giving it my best shot and I will live with the results. As soon as I get the books saved I plan to format the drive again and reinstall XP Home from my disc and go on from there.
I run a deep scan and yes, recognizable names come up ie, names of songs/groups, book names, and descriptions of photos although many of them are just titled IMG or jpeg with a number.
I guess I got all that I could hope for. i still couldn't find my bookmarks. Oh well...
I will say that this software is fantastic. After going through all this tedium I have checked multiple files of music, video, books and movies and all seem to work as if they were never formatted. I'm sure I will come across some files now and then that will be corrupted but overall I give Recuva a 10. i have retrieved/salvaged over 300 gbs of data. Next step is to reformat and hope I can prevent any dormant cells of that virus from reentering my pc!
I am glad your persistence paid off.