First time user and a few questions

[Logun]

Hello;

 

I've done some tertiary searching and not seen an answer to these questions but if they've already existed please keep the flames to a minimum.

 

1) I am trying to recover a 2TB drive, however I do not have another 2TB drive to write onto so I'm a bit stuck to trying to recover it back onto itself.

a. I do have a 1.5 TB drive with 1TB of empty space on it. I've gone through the recoverable files and unchecked a lot of them to try and get it down to the 1TB range, but there is no running summation of the total storage needed? (or is there that I'm missing). What happens if I try and recover to a space smaller than is needed? Will it overwrite existing data until all files are recovered, or is it aware and will stop and/or error?

 

b. Does the % full of a drive in recovery affect the possibility of overwriting the data you are trying to recover?

 

2) Even when trying to recover the drive onto itself it does not seem like I can. I am recovering the F: drive however since I started the scan the F: drive no longer shows in the explorer nor even in the Disk Manager at all (like not even as an unallocated Disk 4 or whatever)

Options -> Recovering -> Restore Folder Structure is checked

when I click the Recover button (or even right click and Recover Highlighted) it forces me to select a drive other than the scanned F: drive.

 

I'm using the most recent version 1.44

 

Thanks!

[Alan_B]

All your lost file are in the "Free Space", and for every 1 MB that you recover you may well corrupt to uselessness 2 GB that has not and thereafter can never be recovered.

Hence recover to the same partition is most inappropriate.

[Logun]

so it does not recover the file to the same physical file space that it originally occupied? Bummer

 

On to the second part then - is there a way to tell the size of data I'm going to recover and/or what happens if the disk I am writing the files to becomes full?

[Alan_B]

I have had no particular experience of using (or needing) Recuva,

and will leave it for others to advise you.

[Augeas]

There's no way to find a bytes total, and I presume Recuva will stop if the receiving disk becomes full - but I have never tested this.

[DennisD]

Hi Logun, and welcome to the forum.

 

How about explaining exactly what happened to put you in this position?

 

What happened exactly with the 2TB drive you're having problems with, and have you tried anything else before having a go with Recuva?

 

Which operating system are you running by the way?

[Logun]

Here's the TL;DR first:

 

Windows 7 64 bit

 

Quick formatted the drive. (actually I did it to both a 3TB HDD and a 2TB HDD)

 

Recuva has picked up 99% of the lost files on the 2TB HDD now I just need to "recover" them. However the 2TB drive was about half full and I have a 1.5TB HDD which has 1.03TB of open space. So recovering to the 1.5TB HDD might have problems if Recuva cannot handle when the write to drive gets full

 

After the 2TB recovery will be the 3TB recovery, which will encounter the same issue but between the 2TB HDD and the 1.5TB HDD I should be able to swing it .. I hope

 

 

Long version:

 

Set up:

1x 1.5TB HDD - no problems

1x 2.0TB HDD - did a quick format need to recover

1x 3.0TB HDD - did a quick format need to recover

4x 120GB SSD array RAID0 - contains OS

 

Re-installed OS onto the SSD Array, and noticed only the 1.5TB HDD was showing in Explorer. Went into Disk Manager trying to get the other 2 HDD recognized by Explorer - they were there as Disk 2 and Disk 3. This has happened before but I cannot remember exactly what I did - convert to foreign disk or something? Dunno, can't recall, but this time it was late at night and for whatever reason I incorrectly though if I put a new volume on it that would set it straight.

 

Obv when you create a new volume you *must* format. At this point I knew I was screwed so I did the quick format and then came here to begin the recovery process. A quick format only wipes the pointer table so I have no real worries about not being able to get the data, now it's just a matter of learning this tool so I don't create more problems during the recovery process.

 

 

 

I'd like to recover to the original drive, but I was under the assumption the pointer to the file would just be recreated without needing to physically move the file. If the file must move then this would not work ask I would most certainly blow away other data. - however as I said in the OP recovering to the original disk isn't even possible right now as once the deep scan process finishes it removes the drive from both explorer and the Disk Manager.

 

I'm running the deep scan again as I've had to reboot my PC since last night, so maybe that was a blip? I don't know but will soon see, only another couple hours.

 

Thanks all for the help!

[DennisD]

It sounds like you took the best option by quick formatting, but to be honest I have no idea how recovering to and from drives of that size would be handled by Recuva.

 

Maybe if you had the view option set to "Tree View" (Options\General\View Mode), you could try recovering a number of folders at a time, folders which you may have some idea as to their size.

 

You can also have Recuva configured to recover to the same folder structure (Options\Actions\Restore Folder Structure) the files were originally in. Not the original folders, but a copy of that folder structure on the separate recovery drive.

 

That way if you run out of space it wouldn't be during a really large "complete" recovery attempt.

 

Sadly, as pointed out by Alan, recovering files isn't as simple as restoring deleted files from the Recycle Bin. If only it was that easy, but that just can't be done, which is why it's paramount to restore to a separate drive or partition.

 

I was asking that stuff above, in case you'd simply deleted a partition, which is easily done, and usually easily to undelete.

 

Sorry I couldn't give you much more than you already have.

[Logun]

no worries I appreciate the hand. This is pretty much what another friend told me - was to restore in bunches. It might take longer but I'll have a better handle on the space available

 

Not sure who might be able to answer this one but why is it not possible to reconstruct the pointer table and simply restore the files in that manner?

[DennisD]

I'm reasonably sure my illustrious colleague above, Augeas, provided a pretty good description of why quite some time ago, or maybe it was a link to an explanation.

 

Can't remember exactly, and it may not have been Augeas, but I do seem to remember reading something, and it was quite complicated.

[Alan_B]

A professional data recovery expert might know how to reconstruct pointer tables,

but he would charge more than it costs for you to get a spare 3 TB drive which would avoid all the complications.

[Augeas]

I've found this from some older posts I made:

 

NTFS updates multiple fields in deleted MFT records to prevent them being accidentally accessed, and in files with many extents can overwrite the cluster addresses. Then there's the MFT bitmap, the cluster bitmap, the indexes, folders, other metafiles.. And that's just for one file.

 

The changes made in the delete process also allow any part of the file allocation to be reused at any time, so an undelete isn't really an option even in theory. The process would be impossibly complicated and you would be trying to 'undelete' something that may or may not physically exist, not a very good premise.

 

Alan's proposal - but another drive - is the way to go. You can always use the drive afterwards as a backup.

[DennisD]

Thanks Augeas.

[Kimberly White]

Hello,

Is what I have been reading telling me that maybe I should not use Recuva to recover files without having some major complications that I don't want to deal with?

 

Kim

email address removed by moderator to avoid spamming

[Alan_B]

Unless Logan has sold you his particular HDD then you have a high probability of zero complications

 

Recuva works well in many situations.

 

I suggest you try Recuva, taking care to avoid writing to the partition with lost files,

and if you need help then start a separate Topic.

[Kimberly White]

Thank you very much.

Kim