Recuva Slo-o-ow. Never used to be

Recuva
1

My XP drive used to run a full "deep" recuva in 45 mins has done that for years. Suddenly it is 15 hours every time. Drive has scandisked fine, Malwarebyted and defragged I have tried in 'safe mode' and installed an older version of recuva but still the same so I know this is unlikely an update or recuva problem. Near 100% processor use throughout, poor thing. I see people often have this exact problem across several operating systems so it's not an XP issue. but never a solution :( Just a brush off of with cliches.

3 kwezzies

1 Is there a monitoring method more thorough than task manager which could show where the steady and laborious balking is actually taking place in what used to be a zippy process?

2 Could it be working overtime trying to piece together deleted files which are ironically more scrambled after defragmenting?

3 Is there a way to remove the 175,000 already overwritten deleted files it always finds?

2

Recuva hasn't been updated for yonks, mine is dated Feb 2017, so it's not somethiong that has changed in Recuva.

1) Don't know

2) Who knows what it's doing?

3) Run a wipe free space with Drive Wiper. Recuva will probably still take as long but you won't get the huge list of found files.

3

No change :( Ran Drive wiper. Still 175,000 files found. Still taking 15 hours. at 100% processor use.

4

It won't make Recuva run any faster (it still has to scan every cluster on the disk) but 15 hours is horrendous.

After running a wfs a deep scan should find very few files. It will still show all the files in the MFT as these can't be removed. They should have invalid names though.

If Recuva finds 175,000 deleted files then this is the amount of deleted files in the MFT. If this is the number reported as ignored than they are undeleted (live) files from the MFT.

5

I have just solved the problem Yippee!

I really hope this helps others

The drive was stuck in PIO mode . It required a fairly arduous Registry editing session to get it back to normal

described here :

https://techlogon.com/2011/03/28/how-to-fix-hard-drive-stuck-in-pio-mode/

Go to this section "If A Drive Still Shows Current Transfer Mode As PIO Mode" and follow the detailed instructions.

6

It sounded exactly like a PIO mode issue and it was (although it could've been worse such as a hard disk issue, and still could be because of that since hard disks don't usually get stuck in PIO mode).

If you use that XP system regularly it helps to once per week (or once every two weeks) make sure it's in the preferred faster DMA Mode, here's instructions that don't require editing the registry:

https://forum.piriform.com/topic/38431-restoring-dma-mode-in-windows/

7

Thanks Andavari. Now I know what it was the 100% processor use is a very strong clue since DMA doesn't use the processor the way PIO does.

I'm guessing setting a restore point is a way to hold the updated registry settings in the unlikely event the drive drops the ball again. only requiring one to drop back to the previous day or two's scheduled restore point?

8

Restore Points and registry backup programs that can restore the registry won't work to undo hardware (CD/DVD, hard disk) getting stuck in PIO mode.