I've done a scan of an external hard drive that had file-system errors on it, and while I can see all the files (a mix of video, audio, and documents: mp3, wmv, flac, docx, etc.) in the Recuva window after the scan, when I try to recover to either my C drive or another external hard drive, all I get are a few random text files, bin files, and so on--none of the mp3s, flacs, etc. I had Recuva set to recover the external hard drive's folder structure, and while I can see this folder structure on the C and other external hard drive, the files within those folders are not the same. I've tried recovering every found file, and then a couple of selected files, but all to no avail. Basically, I just get the same few text and bin files mentioned above any way I do the recovery. Hopefully, I just have something set wrong, but if so, I can't find it. Help!
Wait--I take that back. I had checked that box. I have a number of non-deleted files showing up in the window that pops up after a scan. I just tried to recover some of the audio files again, and I was told that the system could find none of those I had checked (approximately 300-400 mp3s).
What happened with your drive to give you the file system errors, and have you tried anything to fix them?
Maybe run "ChkDsk" on that drive, and it may fix some of them. Right click the drive and select "Properties\Tools\Check Now" ...
... you can either do only a scan by leaving the boxes unchecked, or tell it to fix file system errors.
I believe Recuva uses the MFT (Master File Table) to initially scan for files (if I'm wrong on that someone will surely put me right),, and if that's damaged then you have a problem.
I'm not the most clued up guy on here with Recuva, but I'm sure the member who is will chip in if he can add anything more positive.
In your shoes, I would also consider trying a rescue CD to get at your files. Some thing like "BootMed", which can get files from damaged systems/drives. You burn it to CD as an Image, and then boot your PC with it.
There's also Test Disk/PhotoRec, which are companion programs, and can get stuff recovered from even the most serious scenarios.
I'm not sure how the drive was corrupted--it just stopped working properly last week (going really slow when transferring files, and sometimes locking up altogether). And I did a chkdsk with both boxes checked initially, then one at a time after both boxes checked failed more than once. I now keep getting the message from Windows 7, 64 bit Home Premium (sorry for leaving that out) that the hard drive needs to be reformatted after running chkdsk succeeded (I think the top box checked was the last one I did).
After my initial post, I did have success recovering about 8 mp3s, but after that Recuva wouldn't recover any more. I'll try BootMed and the other programs (if it doesn't work) sometime soon.
Yes, I do know how to burn an .img file. I did so with BootMed, and the disc has been running for about 36 hours straight, trying create the image of the corrupted external harddrive on another external harddrive. That seems like a long time to me, but a) the corrupted external may have extensive corruption and it is 300 gb (give or take) of data. I did note that on the cmd window in Ubuntu, it keeps saying that there is an input/output error and "Block damaged" or something like that (I'm not in front of that computer right now); if you know anything about the messages in this tool when it's working, and this looks like it's not going to recover an image of the drive, let me know, and I'll stop it immediately when I get back home (I did a search in the BootMed forum and in their manual, but found nothing on these messages).
Anyway, in the Ubuntu boot, I was actually able to see all the files on the corrupted drive and was even able to copy a few folders over; but it kept hanging up and stopping, so I've tried the dd_rescue/create image tool. If it doesn't finish by tomorrow morning, though, I'm going to have to stop it, as I need my laptop back!
To be honest, this is one of the programs quite a few of us have laying there ready on CD, but luckily have never had the misfortune to have to use in a situation such as yours, so I've no idea what the error messages would be about.
I wouldn't have thought making a complete image of the damaged disk would have been necessary, I was hoping you would simply be able to copy your data off that drive. Saying that, if you're having difficulty with simply copying your data over, I can see the thinking behind making an image.
My Macrium Image Backup of my system drive can be "mounted" as a drive and would appear in "My Computer" as a hard drive with an assigned drive letter, and can then be accessed as you would a normal hard drive.
Your problem, as you clearly explain, is the physical size of that drive you're trying to "Image".
What I'll do shortly is boot my computer with Bootmed and check out it's various file recovery features, and see if there's anything positive I can feed back to you.
I'll also sort out some other file recovery packages which may give you more success than you're getting at the moment. As to the Image you're trying to create, maybe let it run a while longer, but if you're not confident in it completing call it a day and we'll try with some other software to try rescue your data.
Have you had a try with "TestDisk" or "PhotoRec" at all? They look daunting, but worth a try.
You're right Alan, but TestDisk and Photorec, as well as other recovery software, can work with either ...
TestDisk can
Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
Fix FAT tables
Rebuild NTFS boot sector
Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
Fix MFT using MFT mirror
Locate ext2/ext3/ext4 Backup SuperBlock
Undelete files from FAT, exFAT, NTFS and ext2 filesystem
Copy files from deleted FAT, exFAT, NTFS and ext2/ext3/ext4 partitions.
It's a good spot all the same.
@hazel
That's a good link hazel, and thanks for jumping in with it. When it was first mentioned on here a wee while back I didn't bookmark it, and you know what my memory's like. My bad.
@tim
I dunno if it was a bad install, or a duff copy of Bootmed, but the only thing I could run was GParted and the windows explorer type file handler.
That worked fine, and easily copied files from my 320gb USB hard drive to another, but your drive must be pretty messed up.
TestDisk and Photorec failed to launch at all. I kept getting "in/out" error messages.
The "Applications" menu wouldn't load at all. As soon as I selected that option from the toolbar, I got what looked like a close down and relaunch of the shell. Very strange.
hazels link above looks a very good bet, and apologies that I didn't have that in my bookmarks. I would go with that next if you're not flagging and too disheartened yet.
In case of a system malfunction, caused either by a virus attack or file corruption, you can retrieve valuable information from your disks and copy it to another local drive, partition or save the data to CD/DVD. The File Transfer Wizard helps you to export data as easily and conveniently as possible.
Lets hope you have some success with these alternatives.
That is a long time tim, but sometimes these projected countdown timers can be pretty way out, and come down pretty quickly before they settle to anywhere near accurate.
I just hope you can get your stuff back at the end of the day.
Maybe just try getting a small amount back at a time. I've had experience of that working better than a mass recovery of a lot of data.
Yes, I think small amounts are what I'm left with, since neither program recommended on here works. I think what happened was the Chkdsk repaired something and made the file system not show up in Windows, for when I went to Disk Manager just now, the file system said "RAW" and not NTFS, as it should. Possibly that's why everything is so slow. Or it could just be the errors. At any rate, I was just able to recover a few mp3s, so that's something.
