Trying to Restore Deleted Video Files From A Drobo Drive

[Jelly Sandwich Dude]

I am attempting to recover video files that were accidentally deleted on my Drobo drive. Using a Drobo 5N, there were a few hundred home video files, family events and such, and the folder holding files was accidentally deleted. Due to the size of the folder, Windows skips the recycle bin and does a permanent delete. In the past, I've used the program RECUVA to find and restore such files, but I've never done it on a Drobo. So, now, using RECUVA, I run it on the Drobo, and upon scanning it sees all my video files without issue. When I proceed to do the restore, it will restore successfully. When I try to play the video files it recovered, they will not play. Says the MP4 files are unplayable. I've used GOM Player and VOB Player, with no luck. So, its not a codec issue, because these played here fine before deleting.

So... my question is... does it have something to do with Drobo? Is the recovery of deleted files on Drobo different, hence not making it possible? Or, is there some other way I can try to recover these files that I do see in recovery scans, and I haven't overwritten the drive sectors?

[nukecad]

I don't no about drobo but sometimes recovered video has an incorrect file header. (Again don't know why but it happens).

If you do an online search you will find various apps (free or paid) that can restore mp4 headers and/or fix other errors.

One or two of those may be worth a try.

You say this has happened more than once so if these are important (and if you can get them back) you should seriously consider making a backup copy of the files to an external drive and putting it somewhere safe. (Preferably not in your house in case it gets struck by a crashing plane/meteorite, or you have a fire/burgulary).

[Jelly Sandwich Dude]

Yep... just tried like 4 different apps to repair the headers, and no go. Really weird. Nothing was done to the drive. They were just deleted. They can be restores, and the file looks intact (file name, location, file size), but they seem corrupt in some sense. I wonder if its the fact that its a Drobo drive that causes this. Thank for the info, though.

 

[nukecad]

Hopefully one of the members who knows more about using Recuva will be along to give help.

For now, and after looking back through some old threads:

What kind of format does the drive have? If it is FAT32 then you may have problems.

Maybe try the suggestion here from @Andavari to see if it can create new headers for the files?:
https://community.ccleaner.com/topic/51594-mp4-files-recovered-but-wont-play/

[Augeas]

Are the drives in the Drobo SSD's?

Have a look at the header info in Recuva Advanced mode. Are the headers all zeroes, or random data, or what?

What file system is the Drobo?

How large are the video files?

This might be interesting....   https://recoverit.wondershare.com/repair-video-file/how-to-repair-mp4-video-header.html

[Jelly Sandwich Dude]

The files are on the Drobo volume. The volume consists of 5 hard drives. But, Drobo makes those 5 hard drives look like one. So, to the computer, Drobo is one very large hard drive. I'm sure you already know that... but, just stating incase you weren't familiar with Drobo.

So, I'm doing the recovery off the whole volume, not an individual drive. So, using one file as an example, the file is 1.5GB. I see it using RECUVA. I restore it. The restore file is still 1.5GB, same as the original. When I go to play it, it says the file is unplayable. If I look at the header, its all zeros. The file system on the Drobo volume is NTFS. I've also tried multiple different players, and no go. To me, it seems like the recovered files are no good, but I can't figure out why. If its the way Drobo stores files? or the way RECUVA restores files. Just baffles me. I attached a screenshot of GOM player when I try to play the file.

[Augeas]

I never knew there was such a word as Drobo until I saw this thread.

Recuva gets its information from the MFT - this holds the file names etc and the data cluster addresses. Recuva will copy what's at those addresses (the data within the clusters) when it does a recovery. It's a copy of what's there, there's no concept of the data being good or bad. If the headers are zero then it's likely that the rest of the file is zero, and thus, from a user point of view, unrecoverable.

From NTFS's point of view there's no reason why the data should be zeroed, data clusters are not touched on file deletion. However the Drobo is some variant of Raid, and I think there's a SSD front end, so I have no idea what's going on inside the box.

If you want you could download the portable version of HxD hex editor and use it to look at the recovered files one at a time. You can skim down through them and see if they are all zeroes, as I suspect they are. If so the file data is lost. I don't think a Recuva deep scan will help in these circumstances.

BUt I'm no Drobo expert, perhaps a data recovery firm could advise.