recuva recovered files won't play

[sfanto39]

I ran "Format" on the SSD in my Vantrue N2Pro dashcam - then wanted to recover a bunch of the files.

recuva was able find and recover to my local drive many of the files I wanted. recuva had the correct file size / date but couldn't create a Preview for any of them.

None of these files will play in VLC or MS Photos.

Is there a fix?

if someone from CCleaner wants to see a sample file I can upload / email it to them, but there's nothing under 1.95MB.

 

[Guest johnccleaner]

Unfortunately, it's very likely there isn't a fix.

When an SSD (or other Flash-based storage) is formatted, it commonly wipes (almost) all data on the device in such a way that it's unrecoverable, in an attempt to restore the drive to as close to a 'factory original' state as possible.

This can't be done for the file table (as doing so would destroy the partition on drive, making it need to be remade), so there can still be lingering entries pointing to the last location of files that existed before the format which Recuva would then see. It would then dutifully write a file containing the next # of bytes as indicated by that entry, nevermind the fact that those bytes would be all 0s, or some other 'empty' pattern. 

Keep in mind that Recuva, and other file recovery software, can't know what data was supposed to be there beforehand, and so can't tell if the data present (whether all 0s or something else) is what's actually supposed to be there or not.

It's possible that a full-on data recovery team could recover data from the device; I'm not comfortable recommending any as we have not partnered with such a service and I have (thankfully!!) not had need of such a service myself in order to give a personal testimonial, but perhaps some of the other kind users on the forum could suggest some? In any event, I would let them know what you told us (that it's a formatted SSD, and that you already attempted recovery but were unable to play the files) so that they can quote appropriately or even tell you if they're not able to to perform such a recovery outright.