Today I deleted a couple hundred files, and then cleared the recycle bin a couple minutes later like I usually do. Immediately after clearing the recycle bin, I realized I needed some of the files, so I opened Recuva and ran it in advanced mode with all options checked. It found nothing.
The files were on my D drive, which is not my boot drive, it is a 3TB Western Digital that I use for storage and nothing else. I performed no further actions on the drive after the deletion of the files and clearing of the recycle bin. I immediately ran Recuva, which took about 30 minutes.
So I have a couple of questions about this:
- I hear all this talk about how data isn't really deleted, it can always be recovered, etc. however it appears as though data on this particular drive IS permanently deleted and eradicated immediately upon clearing it out of the recycle bin. So what is going on here? Why is this drive permanently destroying the data as soon as you click the delete key?
- Is there anything else I could try, to get these files back, or are they just gone for good? When running in advanced mode are you still supposed to click something else in order for the hidden/deleted files to show up in the results? Under options>actions I have all 5 things checked, but the results window comes up completely blank.
I really don't understand how they can already be gone for good, seeing as about 30 minutes passed since deleting them, plus I did absolutely nothing else on the drive after deleting them. Is this just a wonky drive specifically designed for people to use for storage of illegal files?
Do you have anything in the File/Path box? What are the counts of files found/ignored at the bottom of the window?
I don't see how you can run a deep scan on a 3 tb disk in 30 minutes, but I might be wrong, my kit is hardly cutting edge.
I can run it again if you like, but I ended up trying another program [Moderator removal of competition product name] and it found most of the files. So since I've already restored them and moved them around it will probably mess up the Recuva results.
I believe it was about 2700 found/ignored at the bottom. I did ensure that I had all options checked though so I'm not sure what it was ignoring/hiding.
If 30 min for 3TB is too fast, maybe it's not fully scanning it and that's why it isn't finding the files? I do have deep scan selected. This particular drive isn't used that much, it's not a daily-use drive where I'm constantly adding and deleting things, so that may be another reason.
I'm glad you were able to find them (even if via another software). As this is an official recuva website I've had to excise the name of the competitive software from your post.
If you mean that you want to see all those ignored files then check the top three boxes in Actions/Options.
If you mean that Recuva wont recover everything then that's true. It will only recover what it can find on the disk: as space is reused some files are inevitably overwritten.