Recuva

Recuva
1

I have just downloaded Recuva Pro as I had issues with recovering files from a hard disk which changed its name however all the files to a disk and no matter what I do (by following all the suggestions, the recovered files will just not open. I have tried word docs, PDF docs, xml, mp4 files and not one of them will open. Either I am a real muppet and am doing something wrong or the software just doesn't work.Illustrious Newsletter December 2015 Final (2016_01_19 16_01_51 UTC).pdf

This file is an example of a PDF I have recovered but for the life of me I cannot get this or any of the files to open.

Any suggestions please?

Thanks in advance if you are able to help.

David

2

The file you attached appears to be a string of various chunks of data. The first chunk is a png, so if you rename the file it will display as some sort of weather icon. There's a lot of other stuff following that which might or might not be valid. I guess that in some way the cluster addresses are corrupt, so Recuva is looking in the wrong place. Is the disk FAT?

3

Yes it's an internal hardrive which mysteriously changed from G: to a D drive the names of the files all seem to be there but just wont open.

4

Do you mean Yes it's FAT? It's almost impossible to guess what has happened. Are the files showing as deleted or live?

5
17 minutes ago, Augeas said: 
<div class="ipsQuote_contents">
	<p>
		Do you mean Yes it's FAT? It's almost impossible to guess what has happened. Are the files showing as deleted or live?
	</p>
</div>

Yes, it's a FAT32 Drive - the files are live rather than deleted. The problem seemed to have happened after a system restore and the computer renamed a local drive that was originally names G and changed it to d: . Essentially the files appear to be there after running Recuva, but they will not open whether it's a jpeg, word, pdf or any other type of file.

6

I tried your attachment with a few 'PDF repairers', both online and downloaded/installed.

Results varied from a blank page, through the aforementioned weather icon as a .png, to multiple partial pages.

This one seemed to do the best of the ones I tried, it showed 14 partial pages and a list of all the errors it had encountered.

https://www.pdf-online.com/osa/repair.aspx

I still couldn't get it to open in Adobe Reader after being 'repaired', but at least it shows you just what the errors in the file are.

Maybe running through more than one 'repairer' could finally get something useable or at least openable?