file just deleted but listed as unrecoverable

[jasoncollege24]

Hi,

 

I just deleted a file from an NTFS file system, and recuva is telling me that the file is unrecoverable, and that the file's data could not be found on the disk, despite the fact that I used recuva before anything else at all was done on the drive. The file size is 2.8GB in size, wasn't fragmented, and was accidentally deleted using the permenantly delete option in windows (bypassing recycle bin). I tried to recover the file anyway, and the recovery failed.

 

What could've gone wrong?

 

File was deleted over a network. It was located on an external drive connected to a windows 7 laptop. The computer that deleted it was windows 8.1.

[Augeas]

The only time I've seen a 'Data could not be found on disk' message is when a file of over 4 gb is deleted, as NTFS zaps the cluster addresses to 0xFFFFFFFF.

 

However the Recuva documentation states that 'Recuva is not capable of recovering data over a network,' so this might have some bearing on the matter, although it isn't clear if you're running Recuva over the network or not.

 

The file might be found by running a deep scan, searching on datae/filesize as the file name will probably not be present. If the file is not fragmented then it will - if found - be recoverable in its entirety.

 

Of course if the drive has been accessed since the deletion then the file data may be corrupted.