Recuva Vs DeepFreeze

[AndyRecuva]

Hello Recuva designers/users,

 

So I have a problem that you guys may help me with:

 

-I saved a file on a Windows machine and due to the fact that the system has Deep Freeze installed on it, the file is nowhere to be found. 

 

- I am not sure what Deep Freeze does exactly with the files(Deletes, formats? or something else?) but I thought I'd give Recuva a shot. II have previously used Recuva on my PC, quite successfully. 

 

-I ran normal scan and none of the results are in C:\users\[username]. I am expecting my file to be in C:/users/[username]/downloads but the only user-specific results that I get are from users\Administrator(something to do with Deep Freeze? maybe there actually never was a  C:\users\[username]\downloads directory on disk?). 

 

-I then decided to run a deep scan, which took 1 hour for stage 1 and found over 5M files (it's a public PC) but would never move on to stage 2. My theory is that it had trouble with RAM, since I only have 4GB of it.

 

So here are my questions:

 

-Should I even try Recuva to counter Deep Scan's deletions/formats? It's been a week since my file was lost. A week with Deep Freeze means 7 reboots, at least. Deep Freeze  restores the PC every time it reboots. (restoration =? deletion/format, not sure).

 

-If I can, what should I do when it freezes at stage 1, wait for 1 hour or 2? or simply cancel?

 

-Why am I getting files from Administrator only? as far as user-specific files go, I mean. There is other stuff as well, stuff that is not relevant for this particular problem.

 

 I need directions/opinions rather soon.

 

Thanks. 

[Hav0c]

Hello and welcome to the forums.

 

The place where I studied used Deep Freeze. It's a very, very solid piece of software !

 

My understanding of how it works is it locks all files pre installing of Deep Freeze. Once the system starts and you work on it ALL modifications done to the PC will be undone after you restart the system. In other words the system will resort back to the state when Deep Freeze was installed.

 

All the files saved prior to installing Deep Frees to the system will be erased for good and you will not be able to get them back as Deep Freeze secure erase the files.

 

I personally think that Deep Freeze was developed in the mid set of always having a stable testing system to work on no matter how hard you try to modify it.

[Nergal]

Yes Deep Freeze did it's job and the file is likely unretrievable, via majority consumer products,by design

[mta]

doing some web searching, seems no-one really knows how Deep Freeze does what it does.

general consensus is it works at the partition level of the drive and redirects all drive access, so no changes survive a reboot.

its been around for years and plenty of users have tried to get past it without success (me included).

 

from what I have seen Deep Freeze do, I would say you have no hope of getting your data out of it, simply because it was never 'recorded' in the first place.  my theory is it creates one big sandbox, installing the software makes a snapshot of the PC which is all you ever play in.  every time the PC restarts, the sandbox is put back to the snapshot state.

[Hav0c]

A thing that I didn't mention was, Deep Freeze can be set up with a "save zone" where users can save data that will not be affected by the reboot.

 

Ask the Admins if they didn't set up a "save zone" or can set one up for future use.