Recuva just messed up my Hard Disk

[rakesh_74]

Hi,

 

Recently i found that two of my folders from one of my partitions were missing. I googled and found that a lot of people were recommending Recuva. So i installed it and the first time i made it search, it searched only 2 files. Later, i made it scan on "DEEP SCAN". It searched about 65000 files at about 83% till the time i saw but i left for some work and later found that my computer was trying to recover but never turned on as in the last an error came that "No Boot Device".

 

Now, i have taken it out of my Dell 580s and tried to attach it with Win 8 as well as Win 7 but it just shows as USB / ATA bridge & in Device manager it shows that the device is working perfectly.

 

I tried it with Win XP, it did recognise the drive but only shows my folders and doesnt let me copy and gives an error that cannot read from the specified device. It was working perfectly till the time i installed "Recuva" and i am on the verge of losing my data. Some folders show as 0 bytes whereas the most important still shows 13 GB but am unable to copy.

 

The 320 GB WD drive was attached to my Dell 580s, INTEL i3 on Win home premium

 

Kindly suggest.

 

Regards,

[Alan_B]

Welcome to the forum.

It was working perfectly till the time i installed "Recuva" and i am on the verge of losing my data.

You would not have installed Recuva if your system was working perfectly.

 

I would suggest that either corruption of your Windows system or possibly malware caused the loss of two folders,

and possibly the same cause then struck the entire drive whilst Recuva was innocently scanning.

 

You refer to 13 GB that you are unable to copy.

What else can you tell us about the 13 GB, e.g.

Number of Files and Folders

Names of Files and Folders

 

Alan

[rakesh_74]

Hi,

 

This folder has all the jpegs in different folders, family photographs. One folder of my Canon XSi has around 4000 snaps.

 

Rakesh

[DennisD]

Hi rakesh, and welcome to Piriform.

 

I'm sorry to hear of your problems, but as Alan suggests, it sounds like you had an issue waiting to happen.

 

Recuva only reads a drive and doesn't write to or alter that drive in any way. It compiles it scanned files list in memory and for that reason doesn't even create a temp file of any description.

 

You can see the important folder OK in your XP environment and XP recognizes the drive. Can Recuva scan that drive via XP?

 

If so, set the option "Scan for non deleted files" in "Options\Actions" as you haven't actually deleted that folder.

[rakesh_74]

HI,

 

Thanks for your suggestion. Meanwhile i tried chkdsk with /f/r at OS partition and my bad that it deleted all of my C partition. It kept on giving errors and kept prompting that deleted or corrected files but when it stopped and i checked that there was no file in my C: Was it my option of /f/r which actually went against me?

 

Now am afraid to do anything till the time am sure that a program will not mess with my files.

What do you suggest? Should i chkdsk (without any fixing or repair option) my more important partition or do something else first.

 

An expert opinion is urgently required.

[Alan_B]

Chkdsk has many options with various consequences.

Any change that it implements may either help or hinder.

It is the last thing that I would use if I had lost any files.

 

Windows once booted up in stupid mode and lost all the partitions and files on my secondary HDD.

 

The first thing I did was to use Windows Disk Management and select that HDD which still had the status "online",

and I changed the status to "offline",

and this write protected the contents of its sectors from any damage whilst I downloaded and tested unknown data recovery utilities which might have helped or hindered.

 

I had to search for how to turn it "offline" and cannot now remember how.

It may vary depending on your version of Windows.

I understand that "offline" protection is NOT written to the drive itself but in the Windows Registry.

This protection persists through restart / reboot.

If you connect the drive to a different computer it will become "online" and unprotected.

 

I was able to recover all my files.

[rakesh_74]

Thanks a lot.

 

Can ypu please suggest a reliable recovery software in this case. Should i try Recuva again... am scared

or should i opt for Testdisc or or any other. Please suggest, my knowledge is till here only to remove a disc and connect it to other system.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Need advice from fellow members as well.

[DennisD]

Hi rakesh.

 

After reading your latest posts, can we confirm exactly what it is we are now dealing with, and the state of that drive you ran checkdisk on.

 

You say it deleted your C: partition.

 

How many partitions did you have on that drive, and in something like DiskManager, how many actually show up and do they have drive letters? Does your C: partition now show up as being there but as unallocated space?

 

If Alan and myself can get a clear picture of exactly the situation you are in, we would be better placed to make suggestions, and I'm assuming here that the drive is still attached to another computer. Would that be your XP system?

 

Scanning again with Recuva wouldn't do any further harm to the drive it's scanning, and there's also the possibility with your missing C: partition (if in fact it's missing) of scanning the drive for a lost partition.

 

This is taking extra time I know, but we wouldn't want to bash ahead with recommendations which have the possibility of making things worse.

 

A good tool to have in your arsenal is "Minitools Partition Wizard". A screenshot from this program is usually pretty informative, and if you could give this a try, and upload a screenshot that would be helpful. It will show the current state of your drive including the C: partition.

 

MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition 8: (Freeware)

 

It can also scan for lost partitions if going down that road becomes a possibility.

 

Anyway's, if you can still scan the partition containing your important folder with Recuva, then do so with it set to scan for non deleted files, and see how that turns out.

 

 

EDIT: I'm probably stating the obvious here, but if you do get the chance to recover anything, don't recover them to the partition they're on. You'll overwrite what you're trying to recover.

 

And, if you don't know how to do and upload a screenshot, just say so and we'll show you.

 

Some info here on that: