need folders back

so I ran recuva for my external hard drive and now 12,000+ files but not folders, am I doomed now or is there a way post recovery to get them organized into their original folders?

Perhaps this may help

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=31183&pid=186129&st=0entry186129

Thanks for the suggestion, I tried the approach but no luck, my hard drive is already overwritten. I am now looking to a file "renamer" to help organize the 12,000 files I now have. I do not understand why this happened in the first place. During routine deleting with recuva, my hard drive was wiped ! why why why??? It is in perfectly good shape and was only about 20% used in memory. IF recuva does this to drives, everyone should be very cautious using it!

Are you saving files from the drive you're recovering from??

Richard S.

I sympathise with your predicament, but I dunno how you have managed to overwrite an entire drive with Recuva.

Have you possibly checked some items, and selected "Secure Overwrite Highlighted" instead of "Secure Overwrite Checked"?

In this view the root of the drive has to be selected to open up the rest of the file tree, and remains highlighted unless you change it.

To be honest, I don't know if that would delete everything on the drive as I'm not gonna try, but the possibility comes to mind. A highlighted item is deleted even if it isn't checked.

EDIT:

In that screenshot, I right clicked and selected "Secure Overwrite Checked" and was asked if I wanted to overwrite 1 file.

Without changing anything I right clicked and selected "Secure Overwrite Highlighted", and I was asked if I wanted to overwrite 1,091 files.

So it would delete everything highlighted.

Are you saving files from the drive you're recovering from??

Richard S.

I did save back to the external drive that had been wiped, it loaded it back up with the 12,000 files that are unmanageable as is. I am hoping to hear back from FileRenamer if it can at least aggregate some of the files with clearly identifiable names, the majority do not. I am already past remorse and just going through writing down the folders I can remember that were wiped, the desktop is full of blank shortcut with names of the apps that are gone, but at least are identifiable. This is really post mortem thanks to recuva. I still wonder why, why did it wipe the drive, I used recuva for years without such an event. As I mentioned, the drive's integrity is fine.

I sympathise with your predicament, but I dunno how you have managed to overwrite an entire drive with Recuva.

Have you possibly checked some items, and selected "Secure Overwrite Highlighted" instead of "Secure Overwrite Checked"?

In this view the root of the drive has to be selected to open up the rest of the file tree, and remains highlighted unless you change it.

To be honest, I don't know if that would delete everything on the drive as I'm not gonna try, but the possibility comes to mind. A highlighted item is deleted even if it isn't checked.

EDIT:

In that screenshot, I right clicked and selected "Secure Overwrite Checked" and was asked if I wanted to overwrite 1 file.

Without changing anything I right clicked and selected "Secure Overwrite Highlighted", and I was asked if I wanted to overwrite 1,091 files.

So it would delete everything highlighted.

I did previously select the hard drive letter by itself believeing it would give me back the many gigabites that had been recovered, there was no way i could go through 12,000 files . If anything was on the program that would have provided a folder structure it was not obvious, but now I do realize their may have been an "option" that may have worked, but I do not know for sure as the recovery collected the 12,000 files first.

To be honest Rhh, I'm bemused trying to figure out what you have done.

What is 'Routine deleting with recuva'?

Did you run a normal scan?

Did you have Scan for non-deleted files checked, or any other non-default option?

Was your 'routine deleting with recuva' by folder or drive letter in tree view, or by individual files?

How many files did Recuva show before you lost your drive?

If you attempted to recover 12,000 files back to the original drive then this will kill the recovery, and your chance of recovering the majority of the files.

As Dennis says, I know of no way that Recuva will delete live files. If you highlight or check a live file then you will not get the option to overwrite it (I don't know about doing this at a folder level, but I would think that Recuva would not delete live files here either). In any event live files are only shown if the relevant option is chosen.

In a brief test, I could not get the behaviour that Dennis did, I could not encourage Recuva to delete anything except what it should, even though the root box was ticked.

In a brief test, I could not get the behaviour that Dennis did, I could not encourage Recuva to delete anything except what it should, even though the root box was ticked.

The "Secure Overwrite" doesn't become active with "live" files, so the possibility of Recuva doing that doesn't arise.

For that reason, I wasn't doing that test scanning for non deleted "live" files. The OP was using Recuva to securely overwrite some already deleted files, and I read it as he accidentally securely overwrote every deleted file on the drive, which he didn't want to do.

That's the only way I could see of wiping the entire drive with Recuva.

To add more subtlety to the problem that I had, turns out a visus scan of the problem drive found a dozen Trojan virus files lurking on the drive, this just after the deletions and the Recuva replacement/overwrite. This drive was routinely scanned every day. No way to tell if, during program deletions using Revo Uninstaller that something infected the subject drive that wiped it out before Recuva was even attempted. The reason I started Recuva, portable, was a result of finding that the drive had been wiped in the first place (if I confused anyone on this I apologize). Then, upon running Recuva (with improper settings) I was left with 12,000 files on the same overwritten drive. Looking back, if I had moved the "recovered" files to another drive, and had then discovered the 12,000 files, I would have had the opportunity to go back to the problem drive and try another recovery with hopefully whatever proper settings would have kept the folder structure. I wonder why Recuva seems to default to just getting files back, what good does that do when we work with folders the most, especially with large drives. The program could be much more forthcoming with instructions before someone repeats my mistakes. The language just isn't that clear the way it is presently presented in the program. At least IMHO. Thanks for everyone's input, this train has left the station.