Unable to recover pictures

Recuva
1

I recently found out about this program and jumped with excitement.

That i can recover my files back.

Few months ago, I accidently deleted all pictures my family and i took in vacations.

So i started recuva and selected the path where the pictures were located. But than after awhile (with deep search)

nothing showed up. So to test if the program was working or not. I created a folder called "test" in document and copied a picture inside and named it "testest1" and deleted it and empty the trash can.

I went back to recuva and selected the path "C:/user blah blah/document" and selected search for pictures (again with deep search)

and nothing showed up.... Am i doing something wrong????

OS: XP SP3 prof edition

2

Have you had a read here which may help you?

http://docs.piriform.com/recuva

If not just post back :)

3

Nope. Nothing shows up still :( but than it seems like the search for deleted pictures stops in the middle.

I'm not sure but after the search, the search time is always 9xx.xx seconds.

Maybe im doing it wrong. Because I'm trying to recover a folder.

I accidently deleted a folder full of vacation photos.

If the path of the folder i deleted was "document\mypictures\vacation"

I chose the path as "document\mypictures\"

I'm pretty sure i deleted pictures in my pictures folder but than nothing shows up.

If i want to recover deleted files from the "vacation" folder.

Do i need to create a new folder and name it "vacation"?

4

DJ, your chances of recovering anything deleted a 'few months ago' are somewhere around zero. The constant activity of creating and deleting files and folders (as in your description above) will very likely have overwritten part if not all of your pics.

If you deleted the original files via the recycler then they will be renamed in XP to Dcxx.ext and probably lose their original path too. The Piriform docs also will tell you that files recently created and deleted, as in your experiment, can be overwritten very quickly.

You can recover files to any directory you please, bearing in mind that it is safer to recover to a different partition or drive.

5

I seem to be having a problem getting Recuva to work on a San Disk 8GB Extreme III CF card.

I accientally formatted the card after taking about 200 pictures with a Nikon D300 and I already had Recuva 1.36 and thought that i would be able to recover the files easily using the software. I have run it in normal and deep scan modes and it runs and completes, but finds nothing.

After formatting, the CF card has not been used and I know it had hundreds of files on it as I viewed the files on my PC's card reader. have also tried the trial version of CardRecovery and it actually shows me the files with previews of the Iimages on the card. But I do not want to spend over $40 on a piece of software that I know nothing about even though it apparently worked in this instance.

Any ideas about Recuva working?

6

This isn't the first time someone reported Recuva failing to find files using deep scan on a format drive.

Not sure what the problem is but I tested an old 32MB Smart Media card with some jpgs saved to it.

I formatted the drive as fat and as ntfs Recuva had no problems locating the jpgs.

I've found a freeware tool which appears to have located my deleted files but I'm less that impressed with the interface.

Also you must register your email address to get a license key to enable recovery (probably best use hotmail for that).

http://www.softwarepatch.com/software/smartrecovery.html

On first run click the "About" button to register the program and to enter the license key first.

Now click back to "Scan", select "Advanced Scan" and untick the drives you do not wish to scan for files.

Hit "Start Scan" and let it locate all the files, the rest should be pretty self-explanatory.

Richard S.