OzRon Posted October 8, 2015 Share Posted October 8, 2015 Piriform's website claims that Recuva "can recover files from damaged or newly formatted drives" and states that "Recuva scans all parts of a drive...". Am I misunderstanding? Or am I victim of a documentation problem? Or both? Scenario: Four volumes (C: through F:). Then a crash, and drive D: disappears! When looking at Windows' Disk Management I now see healthy drives C:, E: and F: but the remainder of the drive now shows as "Unallocated". So I obtain and launch Recuva, in the hope of recovering files that were on the now-phantom drive D:. First problem: Before scanning, I have to select what to scan. But while C:, E: and F: are included as options, "Unallocated" is not. Perhaps I have to select "All local disks"? No, that appears to scan only C:, E: and F:. Then I browse through online help and discover that to recover non-deleted files (damaged, etc. drives) I have to select option "Scan for non-deleted files". OK, that makes sense but a subsequent scan of "All local disks" with "Scan for non-deleted files" selected returns thousands of existing files from, you guessed it, C:, E: and F: only! So I'm left to guess that either (1) the crash damage was so great that all traces of files on D: have disappeared or (2) Recuva can only scan areas that are currently allocated a drive letter (and not "all parts of a drive", though that's perhaps a confusing or ambiguous Piriform statement). The answer to this may be that I have to FIRST re-assign "D" to the Unallocated space, which I haven't yet tried while not wanting to do anything that may affect the space that needs to be scanned for files. But if that IS the answer, clearer program documentation would be a great help. Comments/answers appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators hazelnut Posted October 8, 2015 Moderators Share Posted October 8, 2015 Recuva can only scan areas that are currently allocated a drive letter This. Support contact https://support.ccleaner.com/s/contact-form?language=en_US&form=general or support@ccleaner.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OzRon Posted October 9, 2015 Author Share Posted October 9, 2015 Thank you, hazelnut. I suspected as much. Perhaps someone at Piriform might consider clarifying the documentation by adding wording along the lines of the bolded parts below? It could save others a ton of time. - "can recover files from damaged ... drives provided that Windows still sees the original drive letter assignment", and - "Recuva scans all parts of a drive ... provided the drive has a drive letter assigned to it". PS - I re-assigned "D:" to my lost drive by getting Windows to create a new volume in the space that had become mysteriously "Unallocated". Windows insisted that I needed to format the volume before use, which I did using "Quick format" in an attempt to leave the data space intact. Then ran Recuva and scanned D: (including "non-deleted files"). It didn't find a single one of my many lost files! I would hope that this was a result of the original crash/damage, and not a result of my re-assigning that Unallocated space. However if it was the latter, I would argue that Recuva helped lose my precious data. (And I wouldn't use it again until it adds the capability to scan "all parts of a drive", as advertised.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Augeas Posted October 9, 2015 Moderators Share Posted October 9, 2015 I guess it's to do with the interchangeable use of the terms disk, drive, volume and partition, for which I know I'm as guilty as anyone else in this thread. It could, and perhaps should, be argued that Recuva scans all parts of a partition, and recovers from damaged partitions. Unallocated space, no matter what it contained before, isn't a partition any more. Recover doesn't scan all parts of a drive, it scans partitions. Yes, Piriform's documentation could be better, it's not their finest achievement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OzRon Posted October 10, 2015 Author Share Posted October 10, 2015 Thank you Augeas. Agreement appreciated. Probably wrong place to mention this, but for the first time ever I tried to click on "Like this" (on your post). The result, a message stating: An error occurred You have reached your quota of positive votes for the day That suggests that I am allowed zero positive votes per day! Also when initially I pasted an actual screenshot of the above message into this post, it appeared fine in the "Reply to this topic" window. But when I later clicked on "Post" I got: An error occurred You are not allowed to use that image extension on this community Huh? I think that this forum software is not their finest achievment either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Augeas Posted October 10, 2015 Moderators Share Posted October 10, 2015 I don't think that's ever worked. I don't think that anyone has complained about not being able to like me before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators hazelnut Posted October 10, 2015 Moderators Share Posted October 10, 2015 The 'like' button has never been enabled. It was found that this could be open to abuse. But we still like Augeas Support contact https://support.ccleaner.com/s/contact-form?language=en_US&form=general or support@ccleaner.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trium Posted October 10, 2015 Share Posted October 10, 2015 hello ozron perhaps helps this for you about to take a screenshot insert in a post... how to do screen capture and use image hosting sitesproblems uploading attachments Versions of CCleaner Cloud; Introduction Ccleaner Cloud; Ccleaner-->System-Requirements; Ccleaner FAQ´s; Ccleaner builds; Scheduling Ccleaner Free Es ist möglich, keine Fehler zu machen und dennoch zu verlieren. Das ist kein Zeichen von Schwäche. Das ist das Leben -> "Picard" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OzRon Posted October 10, 2015 Author Share Posted October 10, 2015 Thank you trium. I appreciate your suggestions, and that you addressed the second part of my last post. However Windows' native "Snipping Tool" easily creates screenshot images for me. And the image (error message) was so small that it was hardly worth using a separate image hosting site. Plus, I was hoping to have the error message appear "inline" in the post, so I wasn't trying to include it in a separate uploadable attachment. Perhaps on this forum pasting is not allowed and one has to resort to separate attachments, but I found it strange that the small pasted image was accepted until I tried to Post it, when I then received the second error that didn't tell me that I am not allowed to paste a small image, but that I'm not allowed to use that "extension". IMHO that's as unclear and ambiguous as the original problem I reported at the start of this thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christian95 Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 Hello, I in had too the problem of DD lost, not recognized by Windows, Linux. I used "Ultimat Boot Cd" to redo the partition, then " Formatting NTFS ". Now I see my files with Recuva, but when I want to get back them, I have this message " Peripheral not loan ". See the Comment of 15/10/2015 Sorry for my English, it is an on-line translator who makes it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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