Need to recover files from raw drive

Recuva
1

I'm trying to recover files from a drive that was in my old system. I have the drive in my new system now. Here is a screen shot of disk manager.

I have a dual SSD 512gb drives (C & D) and a 320gb HDD (E). The 320 HDD is the drive I am trying to recover files from.

post-72520-0-19660600-1427644909_thumb.jpg

So I ran Recuva and selected "all files" > "no. Recover direct from my drive" > "in a specific location" > browse to drive E: and select.

But Recuva tells me the drive must be formatted first. If I format the drive, it will destroy all files on the drive.....right?

2

WOW, great technical support :angry:

3

you may be surprised to learn that this is a community forum.

its members have simply joined for the joy of it.

if they come across a post they can help with, they tend to do just that.

so don't mistake lack of any response to your problem as lack of interest, it's just that either no-one can help or the one member who can/wants to hasn't logged in and seen it yet.

no staff member of Piriform will respond with help, they may ask for more info to investigate a bug but they never offer technical advice.

if you are not satisfied with help from this forum I believe support from Piriform via their website is available to all with paid-for users getting priority support.

4

I have a usb attached hdd volume which Windows says is RAW. Recuva knows it is NTFS but says it is unable to read the MFT. However if I run a deep scan it ignores the MFT and successfully runs the scan.

It might help if you open Recuva and on the first pane check Do not show this Wizard at startup. This will put you, and Recuva, in Grown-up Mode. Stop/Start Recuva to bring up the search panel. In Options/Actions check Deep Scan and then try a scan against the E drive.

Formatting an SSD is not a good idea for recovering data, as data loss is highly likely.

5

Formatting an SSD is not a good idea for recovering data, as data loss is highly likely.

Exactly, I was shocked that Recuva even suggested that as an option. I know I didn't pay a lot for this software, but it should at least recognize, and ask, if I want to go into "grown up" mode and run deep scan. I wonder how many unsuspecting people have clicked on "format drive" and wiped out their data forever.

I even created a disk image of E: to one of my SSD's and Recuva wouldn't even scan that image file. Said it couldn't determine file system type.

I purchased a different data recovery software and it scanned the drive without hesitation.