Recuva analysis now 214% complete?

[rojay]

I have a different problem with a 1TB external drive. On a recent boot, the drive was detected as having bad sectors, so CHKDSK was run automatically to analyze and fix the errors. CHKDSK reported many errors, which it promptly fixed. When I subsequently reboot, I get an MFT corrupt error and can't access the disk.

 

Enter Recuva. I entered Advanced mode and do a deep scan to try to recover the files. Recuva starts promptly and for the first hour, showed "Current progress - 0%; estimated time left - 10 days" Over the next 5 days, the progress bar slowly increases to about 51% (with 31010 files found). At that point, progress jumped to 110% (estimated time left - 5 days). I keep waiting, and after another 4 days the progress has gone to 144% (or so). Today it jumped to 214%; estimated time left is now fluctuating rapidly between 1 day and 22 days (or so). Progress is still slowly increasing.

 

Is it doing anything? Should I kill it, or keep waiting? Its been running for about 2 weeks - is there any chance of recovering the files?

 

tech specs: I am running WinXP, SP3 with Recuva 1.38.504; screen shot attached .

 

Any help would be appreciated,

rob

[pqr]

Did you notice any activity in Task Manager? My process appears to stick at 42% on a 1TB disk and Task Manager shows no noticeable activity

[rojay]

yes, there is activity being logged in the Task manager, and the "current progress" counter is still increasing (now at 4732% and counting).

 

Piriform, can you give me some advice?

[Augeas]

When running Recuva against a disk with possible damage the first option to try is Scan for Non-Deleted Files, and not check deep Scan. Deep Scan, if it ever finishes, will give you a list of tens, or (on a 1tb drive) hundreds, of thousands of files which may be impossible to sort. Furthermore it will not show files that have not been deleted, which I guess is the opposite of what you want.

 

I realise the reluctance to cancel an application that has been running for several weeks. To be brutal I can't see that it's going anywhere. Even on a 1tb disk it should have finished its scan by now. On a 1tb drive there are 250,000 x 4k clusters, if my maths is correct. Even at a snail's pace of 10 secs a cluster it should be finished in under three days.

 

I should cancel the job, uncheck Deep Scan, check Scan for Non-Deleted Files, and try again.

 

(I'm not Piriform and this is not an 'official' answer.)

[Guest MrRon]

I can give Augeas's reply the official stamp

When trying to restore a damage drive, you are really only interested in non-deleted files.

[rojay]

Thanks MrRon and Augeas,

If memory serves, I had checked both Deep Scan and Scan for Non-Deleted Files ( I should have mentioned this - sorry!)

About 15 minutes after my last post, the scan stopped of its own volition and reported 90350 files found (I have no idea why it took so long). I was able to recover all but 64 files. However, despite selecting the option for preservng the directory structure, the directory structure was not recovered. So now I have about 90286 files, all in one directory. While this is GREAT progress, is there a way to re-establish the directory structure? These are all photographs that have been cataloged through the directory structure; it would be a serious amount of work to recatalog them all.

Would it help to rescan (with different options e.g uncheck Deep Scan) and try again?

[Augeas]

That's a relief. Ninety-thousand files is almost a disappointment, I have almost as many on my small drive - possibly that's the count of non-deleted files? I would put your recovered files somewhere very safe.

 

The non-deleted files should be at the top of the list, and you could recover just those. I don't know why the directory structure isn't being maintained, perhaps the data damage is too great for this.

 

If you're happy with your recovery then you won't need to try the normal scan with scan for non-deleted files checked. Presumably you're being forced to restore to a separate drive as the old drive is not functioning correctly? This is just what you should be doing.