Undeleted Photos Compressed and Irretrievable

Recuva
1

Hey friends,

So what happened

1) I accidentally deleted all of the different user folders on my laptop

2) Undeleted them in Recycle Bin

3) They did not re-appear

4) I downloaded Recuva and found them

5) Recuva returned them to the folder I designated them to

6) The vast majority (some exceptions) were there but compressed to 1 or so MB and corrupted.

Error message:

"C:/cxxxxxx.jpg: Can't read file header! U

Unknown file format or file not found.

for unicode file name please activate in properties / languages"

I would love suggestions / thoughts on possibilities of recovery for my dear summertime photos.

Thanks so much in advance,

Shaina

2

2) Undeleted them in Recycle Bin

Did you really use the Recycle Bin "Restore" option, or did you Undelete with some other tool ?

5) Recuva returned them to the folder I designated them to

Did you return them to a folder on the same partition, which I assume was C:\: ?

3

Hey there Alan,

Thanks for replying!

a) I Restored using the Recycle Bin option, and then I could still not find the files, so I proceeded to Undelete with Recuva

B) I did return them to a folder on the same Partition

Fingers Crossed,

Shaina

4

On average every deleted file that Recuva copies from a source partition to a destination partition will destroy any hope of restoring two similar deleted files in that destination partition.

If the source and destination partitions are different you can hope to have a successful RECUVA session.

If they are the same partition you may be lucky with some deleted files but not others.

For the future please remember to avoid restoring to the same partition.

It might be advisable to use an external drive as the destination.

If your photos are on C:\ then I suggest making minimal use of your Laptop until you have either retrieved them or given up all hope.

Every time you boot up a few dozen MB of (free space) = (delete files) gets over-written,

and simply visiting a few internet forums will write perhaps 200 MB.

What version of Windows ?

User Folders in Vista and Windows 7 have "Reparse Point" complications which are "smoke and mirror tricks",

the photos are not where you think they are.

Perhaps your first attempt using the Recycle bin MIGHT have restored your files, but not to where you were looking.

I am now out of my depth and will leave it for others with more experience to advise you.