Greetings, I am new to forum.
I registered in an attempt to recover files from a (physically) damaged HD, using Recuva.
The disk is not dead, Windows 7 startup repair tools took about 50h ! to diagnose the disk before giving the message :
SMART Failure Predicted on Hard Disk 1 : Hitachi HTS545032B9A300-(S2)
WARNING: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent
Press F1 to Continue
Obviously I have no intention of keeping the disk : program files and many other files too are useless, but I do want to recover some data, mainly from the Documents folder of one user.
Toshiba Satellite laptop, running Windows 7
I made a new Windows 7, live boot disk. It boots of course and I used the command line with basic "DOS" DIR, XCOPY, CD etc, to view and test copy files and folders. I plugged in an external HD to a USB port. Copying files (with XCOPY) worked somewhat... it copied many files until it hit a bad file, where it stuck until an I/O error. So RECUVA time.
I installed the free RECUVA version on another computer and then I copied the RECUVA files with the dummy portable file to the USB healthy HD. The laptop booted from the Windows Repair Live CD and command line. I ran RECUVA and scanned (bypassing the Wizard) with the "not deleted files". After several hours of scanning I got a comprehensive, correct list of the files (with double circle green-white dots), filtered for the Documents folder.
So I checked them all and hit [RECOVER] , intending to copy the files on the healthy USB connected drive BUT....
The popup window for Browse for Folder does not show any of the drives and folders within them....!
Neither C: the old HD boot disk, nor G: the USB HD.
Note :
- at the same time command line shows both disks just fine...
- and both disks show up inside Recuva at the top left pull down menu, with their Windows assigned drive letters
The [Make new folder] button does nothing and the [OK] is greyed out...
What is wrong?
Thank you,
Christos
Athens, Greece
PS :
I found two very similar forum posts
Cannot define recover destination and Problem with destination path
Neither one is resolved