Some JPEGs that got recovered don't open.

[SandyS]

I accidentally deleted a huge folder that had lots of folders in it, each one containing a few hundred photos. It had been on my hard drive, but I accidentally deleted it and emptied the trash before I realized it. Ouch!! Someone suggested free Recuva (I can't afford to buy), and after it did the scan, I got about 3,000 photos back! Or so it said. When I went to look at them, many of them are just blank boxes that won't open. I am thrilled with the photos I did get back, but will those empty boxes ever open? I am keeping them, hoping they will somehow, but how?

[Augeas]

First of all the free and the paid versions both have the same recovery capabilities. Secondly those 'empty boxes' aren't going to right themselevs in a Newtonian world. But don't delete what you've recovered. Don't delete anything until the recovery is finished, or abandoned.

I asume your drive is NTFS?

Did you do a normal or deep scan?

How long has it been since the folders were deleted?

In Recuva's list of found files, those marked as overwritten or partly overwritten will not be recoverable, or not be completely recoverable. With a deep scan nothing is overwritten, but only the first fragment of a fragmented file can be recovered, so some will be recoverable, some won't.

There's no magic in recovery:

Stop using the drive for anything except the recovery.

Run a normal scan, sort by state, and recover all those marked as Excellent. (You could also recover those marked as poor, some might be usable.)

Run a deep scan, select by .jpg, recover all. Many will be unusable, some will be good.

When you've done spend £20 on a pack of DVDs and half an hour on accasional backups.

[SandyS]

I do occasional backups to an external hard drive, only this lost the things that were not backed up yet. My computer friend was unavailable so someone told me about this program. It was about 3 days since the deletion at that point. It was just a normal hard drive on my computer, and I did a normal scan with Recuva. When it was finished, I restored all the "excellent" jpegs onto a new folder on my external hard drive. Then when I looked at that new folder of restored items, I saw many were just empty boxes. That's when I posted here.

Another question, the scan only looks for deleted files, right? That's what it said. So there is no danger of it erasing any good stuff when it closes, right? I am referring to other files, nothing that had been been deleted. It only touches deleted files?

Edited February 8, 2018 by SandyS
had to add new question

[Augeas]

Is it the system drive you're recovering from? Is it NTFS or FAT32?

Recuva can search for non-deleted files if the option to do so is checked. Recuva can also overwrite deleted files if specically asked. It does not erase anything when it's closed, and will never overwrite live files, even if you asked it to.

If the drive is NTFS then the excellent files should open, in the main. How many files do not open (empty boxes, as you say)? Files marked as excellent can be corrupted, if (for instance) a temporary file is written on top of the deleted clusters and that file then deleted. After three days I would not expect this to apply to many files. But if it's the system drive and a lot of browsing has taken place then I suppose it's possible.

[SandyS]

I really don't know NTFS or FAT32. I'm just a 67 yr old woman who has been enjoying my computer since 1997, but never got into technical stuff. I just go through life documenting everything onto my computer and taking hundreds, sometimes thousands, of photos every month. I am on my computer every day for hours. I back stuff up to my external 5TB hard drive now and then, but now I know it has to be more often. That's why I panicked when I accidentally deleted so much important data. It never happened before, and truthfully I still don't understand how it happened since I basically do know what I am doing when I delete files. I had highlighted a few folders within the big folder, yet the entire big folder disappeared. I don't understand it and probably never will. I didn't count how many of the empty boxes there were in the recovered jpgs. Recuva recovered about 3,000 jpgs, so it would have been difficult to count. They had all been jpgs marked "excellent", all had the green button. There were more good jpgs than empty ones, but I just wondered about those empty ones. All in all I am very pleased with Recuva and I am glad it was recommended to me and I will recommend it to others. And I thank you for all your info. It's nice to know there are people who care enough to try to help.