I recently took a video on my camera ... saved to the SandDisk drive. I then inadvertently deleted that video from the camera. I took a few photos before realizing my mistake. When running Recuva, it finds the file but says that recovery is "unlikely" ... Recuva notes that one of the pictures I took seems to have over-written the video file. However, Recuva still seems to recover something ... a large MP4 video file. But it won't play.
Is there anything else I can do with Recuva ... or any other program? It was a long video, so I'm confused why one picture ruins any recovery. I'd be happy if I can even get back parts of the video.
Recuva will recover whatever clusters the deleted file previously pointed to, irrespective of the contents. If the recovered data isn't in a video format - i.e. part of it has been overwritten - then it is difficult to get any software to play it. It isn't like a book or a film reel, which can survive the start being chopped off.
Thanks for the reply. So, do you think there are other programs that might be able to recover some/all of the video file in such a way that it can be play or be processed to play? Is this more of a limitation of the free version of Recuva, or am I'm basically out of options?
There's no difference in recovery capabilities betyween Recuva free and professional. You might find a video player that will attempt to play the recovered file, but the odds are against it as, and if, the start section has been overwritten. Professional data recovery might do the trick, at a cost.