File is there, but inaccessible

[bretsim]

Hello, noob here. 

A laptop I thought was plugged in ran out of battery and switched off unexpectedly. Upon powering on again, I noticed a large (20gb) and important file had vanished (in Windows, the folder it was in was there on first boot, but gave an error when I tried to browse to it. On subsequent boots, the folder vanished completely too.)

I ran Directory Snoop first of all - it didn't find the file, but when I searched by file size, it showed me a non-deleted file with the right name, size and creation/modification/access dates as my file. It had no path, so I couldn't do anything other than feel relieved that at least it wasn't totally gone. In WinDirStat, I could see a large file block of approximately the right size, but again was unable to browse to it. 

I tried Recuva next, with the non-deleted file option selected. It didn't find the file, but when I looked at a deleted file in the parent folder, Recuva gave the info that it was unrecoverable as it had been overwritten by the file I was looking for, with path c:\?\

So every utility I've used knows the file is there, but none is able to do anything at all with it. 

Any suggestions to recover this file? I want to try Checkdsk next, but I don't want to lose the tenuous grip I have on the file at the moment, where I can at least see it's there!

Thanks for reading! 

[Guest johnccleaner]

Despite Recuva saying it's unrecoverable (please keep in mind that the Condition is merely the software's best estimate!), you may still want to try recovering it first - worst that happens, you get nothing out of it, and are in the same position you are now; best case, you get your file back. Please do not recover it back to the same drive, though - recover it on another drive, a USB Flash drive, etc so as to prevent the recovery process from causing any additional damage.

Alternately, Chkdsk might be a good option, with the /f parameter as in that case it should try to return the file to the file system - though it will probably end up as c:\<nnnn>.chk and thus need to be renamed back to its original name and moved to its original location.

Of course, if any of our kind forum members have additional advice, I'll also happily yield to them, as this is not something I've personally had happen before.

[bretsim]

1 hour ago, johnccleaner said:

Despite Recuva saying it's unrecoverable (please keep in mind that the Condition is merely the software's best estimate!), you may still want to try recovering it first - worst that happens, you get nothing out of it, and are in the same position you are now; best case, you get your file back. Please do not recover it back to the same drive, though - recover it on another drive, a USB Flash drive, etc so as to prevent the recovery process from causing any additional damage.

Alternately, Chkdsk might be a good option, with the /f parameter as in that case it should try to return the file to the file system - though it will probably end up as c:\<nnnn>.chk and thus need to be renamed back to its original name and moved to its original location.

Of course, if any of our kind forum members have additional advice, I'll also happily yield to them, as this is not something I've personally had happen before.

Thanks for the reply. The file itself was never marked as unrecoverable - Recuva just didn't pick it up as a non-deleted file, but at the same time it did recognise that it's existence rendered another file unrecoverable. 

ChkDsk was the saviour here. It returned the files to a "found.000" folder on the C drive, and at that point I finally had a path to access the data that had been there all along. 

[Guest johnccleaner]

My apologies, then, I misunderstood what you said - I see now what you mean. I do wonder if attempting to recover the overwritten file would have been fruitful; but probably not, or it would only have retrieved a small fraction of the data.

But no matter! I'm glad that you were able to recover the file with ChkDsk. Thanks as well for letting us know the good news, too - that could potentially help someone else out as well.