Data recovery software?
Si_Crewe
Posts: 40,202 Forum Member
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Anybody got any advice for a decent bit of data recovery software?
A friend has plugged an external HDD into one of those media-player gizmo's (I think his TV has a built-in gadget that is supposed to play media files from a USB device) and, somehow, it has formatted the drive rather than simply playing the media files that were already on it.
The portable HDD is from his work and he's going to put the cost of the recovery software on his expenses so cost isn't really a big deal, within reason.
We'd like to have a crack at this before he goes back to work next wednesday so he can avoid the embarassment of having to get the data recovered by a professional.
I assume his work won't be too impressed that he had a bunch of movies (or whatever it was) on their HDD so it'd be nice if we could sort this out discreetly.
A friend has plugged an external HDD into one of those media-player gizmo's (I think his TV has a built-in gadget that is supposed to play media files from a USB device) and, somehow, it has formatted the drive rather than simply playing the media files that were already on it.
The portable HDD is from his work and he's going to put the cost of the recovery software on his expenses so cost isn't really a big deal, within reason.
We'd like to have a crack at this before he goes back to work next wednesday so he can avoid the embarassment of having to get the data recovered by a professional.
I assume his work won't be too impressed that he had a bunch of movies (or whatever it was) on their HDD so it'd be nice if we could sort this out discreetly.
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£Free, just do a deep scan and see what it can get back.
There's a try before you buy option that shows all files that it can find but of course you have to pay to recover the files but at least you can see if it's found anything extra that Recuva hasn't that Annie listed above.
Yeah, that doesn't help. :rolleyes:
Currently running a deep scan with Recuva but it's about 2/3rds of the way through and saying it's found no files.
I know the HDD did have a heap of stuff on it but I dunno what, if anything, my mate or his family have done with the HDD prior to handing it over to me.
I wonder if the way the media-player thing built into his telly formats the HDD (and then creates a handful of empty subdirectories afterward) makes it harder to recover files?
I'm still open to any suggestions though.
I'll try doing scans with a variety of different bits of software to see if anything works but won't actually try to recover anything until next monday or tuesday just in case a particular bit of software turns out to be better than the rest.
UFS Explorer another to consider if Recuva doesn't work. UFS Explorer is a commercial professional type product that can recover data from pretty much any Windows, Mac and Linux filesystem. It's not free though, but the Standard Edition costs 39.99 Euros (about £32-£35 at current exchange rates). You can also download a trial version to see if it can see the drive and recover data, before having to part with any cash.
Try the free ones first though, no point in shelling out any cash if you don't have to. And if you do have to, make him pay.
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
Uhuh.
I suspect that what's happened is that the media player has put up a "You need to format this drive before it can be used" message and somebody's clicked on "yes".
In other news, Recuva DID find a bunch of files but, for some reason, it's found way more files (in thousands of directories) than the total size of the disk.
I tried recovering a handful of them but they all seem to contain a couple of gibberish files of about 2mb in size.
I do hope I'm not spending time buggering about with this and then it'll turn out that the drive was encrypted or summat and he's forgotten to mention it.
I also meant to ask, I'm also running HDD Sentinel on my PC and it's reporting that this external HDD has bad clusters on it.
Should I try and repair the bad clusters before trying to recover the drive?
I'm a little bit worried about trying to recover the bad clusters in case that process makes it harder to recover lost data.
OTOH, the bad clusters could be the reason why Recuva found a squillion meabytes of gobbledygook and repairing the bad clusters might assist with the data recovery.
Yep that would be favourite user intervention to start a format not player itself doing it automatically.
If the drive is encrypted i would have thought it would have been asking for a password before access is allowed would be the the same if inidividual files only are encrypted.
Repairing the bad clusters or marking them as bad may help but you have to remember if any data is in those bad clusters it will be unrecoverable once they have been repaired.
Yeah.
I'm currently using a thing called Easus to recover the files.
If that fails then I'll have a look at repairing the bad clusters before trying again.
So far, I don't even know where the bad clusters are so my concern is a bit premature but I'm worried that if, for example, the MBR of FATs are bad then reallocating those clusters might destroy the files that are still recoverable on the HDD.
So far I've tried about 4 recovery programs with similar results so it's getting to the point where I'll have to ask him whether he wants me to try and sort out the bad clusters (and risk leaving undeniable evidence that we HAVE tried to tinker with the damaged drive) or just admit defeat and let him get the data recovered professionally.
Anything you attempt now is just likely to make things worse, so probably best for him just to tell work that the drive isn't working and there are bad clusters on there.
If i was you i would tell him that you have tried to recover with several programs and the risk of losing data is very high and if he wants recovery he needs to take it to a professional which will cost a lot of money.:(
You have done all you can with the drive you need to put the ball back in his court as hard as it may sound as he was using company property more than likely impropely.
Hey!
Whaddayknow?!
Easeus recovered all the old directory structures and most of the files.
There are a few pictures (photo's from a site visit) that're showing as zero bytes in size but I assume they're from the bad clusters.
They're currently saved on my HDD so I'm gonna try and sort out the bad clusters before copying the stuff back onto the HDD.
Personally, I never, ever, trust a HDD once it has bad clusters so I'm gonna tell him to tell his boss that the HDD is borked and allow him to look like a hero for noticing it.
As for the files, he's a site manager and I think the HDD contains all the stuff he's generated on-site.
The office has given him a really poor 386 (yes, really) laptop with W95 on it so he uses his own laptop instead and saves stuff to the HDD to avoid cluttering up his own PC.
I know it's a shambles with regard to data security but, meh.
That's not my problem.
I really don't think I would have been comfortable doing anything potentially destructive to the files cos stuff like that has a habit of coming back to bite you on the ass even if you have the best intentions so I'm really glad it's sorted out with no fuss.
Anyway, although I guess everybody will have different results, Easeus Data Wizard gets a big thumbs-up from me.
It's worked better than anything else I tried. Nothing else recovered all the directory structure properly.
*EDIT*
Also, for the sake of nosiness, I can confirm that there's nothing truly dodgy on the HDD. He's got TWO lousy knock-off DVDs saved onto it.
A lot of hassle for the sake of buying a £10 memory stick.
Good mate glad it is sorted.:)
Oh man...that company can't be doing good...