Recuva...sorry but...

[Clean Me Please]

I adore Piriform software and always recommend their products. However, I cannot support Recuva.

I have put this application to the test on Windows 7 x64 to failure. Here is what I did:

 

I began to notice that Recuva was not finding files I recently deleted...fast or detailed mode.

I then decided to do a test. I deleted into the recycle bin a zip file. I then deleted it from the

bin.

 

Immediately I ran Recuva in quick mode and followed the prompts directing it to find my

zip file I just deleted. Needless to say, it failed to find the zip file which was just immediately

deleted. Recuva should have found this easily in quick mode.

 

I've run other tests in a similar fashion with other file types both in quick and detailed mode

to total failure.

 

I take my hat off to Piriform on their other two programs but not this one.

Recuva has always failed this way...even when I had Vista x32

 

(PS: the new beta software you guys have is not such a great idea...but I can make some fantastic suggestions).

[Augeas]

Well, that's not really a representative test. Files that are created and then deleted quite often have their MFT entry and data overwritten immediately, what with the numerous background tasks Windows is performing for you. Also files deleted to the recycler are renamed by Windows, so you would not necessarily find them under their original names.

[Tonan]

I second to this @Clean Me Please. I have been using CCleaner for like ages now. I am a member of yahoo answers and have recommended a lot of people to try recuva without testing it properly...

 

I tested it today to see that it really does not find the file specially under the my documents or downloads

 

for example : C:\users\abcd\downloads

 

If i delete a file here and also from recycle bin. Recuva should find it when i am giving the path to this folder and askin it to find it. The results ends up into nothing or no files found, it should find something with a changed name or something

 

To add to this i did a search in C and it was not able to find this folder downloads, is this some mapped folder in Win 7

 

Am i searcing in the wrong place.

 

If you see in my screenshot, under users it only find the APP DATA

 

PS: There isnt any way to give search path manually i think that should be added

[Sparkiee]

cool tool but could not recover my HDD camcorder from an accidental format. i was really disappointed in this product, as i had high hopes of it working as well as your other products. The tool also had issues recovering RAW images from photoshop just recently deleted in recycle bin. another negative is even with going into advanced settings its really difficult to recover off the wall formats like files from gimp, etc. sorry guys but this tool really needs work. and yes i am keeping in mind that it is FREE.

 

thanks for all the other wonderful software,

Spark

[redhawk]

I don't think there's any problem with the way Recuva works in terms of recovering files I think all programs use the same method it's finding the start of the lost cluster that's the key.

The problem is files that get deleted are not always recoverable because they could be instantly overwritten by another file or the cluster information for the file gets damaged making them appear to be overwritten.

I made the mistake of deleting an mp3 file on a non-OS drive and before I did anything else I fired up Recuva to recover it.

Unfortunately the file had part of the clusters allocated to another mp3 file which I thought was slightly odd considering it was at least 3 years old and had never been touched.

So I tried 2 other recovery programs and again the same problem the file was damaged and unrecoverable just as Recuva had already indicated.

 

Richard S.