Jpg File Recovery To Same Hard Drive As Deleted Files?

[mel2surf]

Thanks Sensei,

I'll give it a try.I don't have much to lose at this

point right?

Will let you know my result

cheers,

Mel

[mel2surf]

Sensei,

Great little program.it recovered/or says the files already exist on my D drive

BUT i cannot open the dam_n files! I try "open with" then IE...blank,but shows it IS a file.

Then tried ACDSEE...blank as well! ARGGh!!

[lopburi3]

Can you open with 'paint' by any chance? Believe all widows have that program.

[lopburi3]

Is your Windows set up to show you the three letter extensions of files? Do they end with ".jpg"? If you select properties are they listed as JPEG image files? If you go to details do you get camera information and such? Is the file size what you would expect each JPG to be? Are you sure you have files and not folders?

Sorry if my questions seem dumb but the more we can narrow it down the better advise those with knowledge can pass on to you.

[mel2surf]

When I try to "restore by copying" from RESTORATION program it says

"files already exist,change folder name"..but it does nothing.

The files show that little olive green icon for JPG then Dc166.jpg

will try paint thanks Lopburi!

[lopburi3]

I would try a number of them as some may be damaged.

[mel2surf]

You think I may have already overwritten them? Strange how when I

try to open with ACDSEE the ACDSEE program opens up normally but "no image available"

[lopburi3]

I think there is a chance you have overwritten some of them before you transferred them from the C drive as you seemed to have continued using that drive after there space was made available for new data. So I would not try one and give up.

[mel2surf]

the path of the jpg's show C:\RECYCLER\S-1-5-21-725345543-79...

says "size" 370189

[mel2surf]

Yea,I guess I blew it.

Thanks for taking time Lopburi!

[lopburi3]

We want the information on the files that are on drive D now. Do you have jpg files someplace on D? They should be what you try to open. I would not give up yet.

[onethailand]

This is dangerously WRONG thinking.

No attempts should be made to write ANYTHING to the project drive. Do not load a recovery application or recover files to the project drive. Otherwise, you could be writing over the same data that you're trying to recover.

Depends on the program you use. A good file recovery program will not overwrite any areas on the hard disk until a full scan has been completed. Despite all the warnings you read from other software about using a different disk for recovery, I assure you it is generally unnecessary.

A program which recovers files one by one is NOT good, however, and you should definitely use a different disk for this purpose.

Also, running a program to convert another drive's file structure is going to cause immense damage as the resources required for this on the original drive (with the erased files) is enormous. That was a huge mistake.

Edited December 30, 2007 by onethailand

[onethailand]

Also, running a program to convert another drive's file structure is going to cause immense damage as the resources required for this on the original drive (with the erased files) is enormous. That was a huge mistake.

I take it back - I did not see that Rice_King advised using the convert program from the command prompt - that should not use up any resources on the NTFS partition as it only makes use of free space on the FAT partition. I mistakenly assumed that some program from within Windows was going to be run.

mel - your last file path showing c:/RECYCLER shows that Restoration is trying to recover the files that were put in the recycle bin. If you can see those files they could be recovered - but you must recover to the D: drive.

From your previous post, it appears that Restoration already recovered something to the D: drive. As Lopburi suggested, you should try a few different files, or different folders if there are any.

Edited December 30, 2007 by onethailand

[lopburi3]

Re reading your posts it appears you are using the windows search rather than opening your drive. Select the "my computer" icon or command and then open hard drive D. Use the details to view file information and go into each folder and check for files ending with .jpg and try to open them. If you have 20GB of new files on drive D you need to check to see what you have and I would not depend on Windows search.

[mel2surf]

Thanks fellas!

The latest on this is:

I found an "undelete" program that I already had,

(after paying 50 USD like a fool)...THIS program is called

"UNDELETE PLUS" and did exactly what I wanted the superdisco fancy 50$ one to do

but the fancy one was NOT user friendly..this one WAS...however, it scanned

and showed that out of a few thousand files recovered,that only about 280 were

"recoverable" files.

At that point I said "f__K it!" and erased ALL of Drive D (to recycle bin/then emptied that)

so I am coming to grips with the fact that I lost all the pics now.I THINK maybe I overwrote

the files,cause as stated before,they would NOT open no matter what I tried.

I was always under the impression that erased files were more EASILY recovered/copied than

is actually the case. Sad to lose many great pics,but lesson to me..BACK UP..BACK UP..BACK UP!!!

Thanks again!

and Happy New Year!!

[torrenova]

Sorry to hear about your loss but ti perhaps advises other of one thing. If you screw up. Just stop. You can look in the recycle bin for sure or use a Baby program to undo what you did but better to just stop and take the computer to an expert.

[TomBrown]

Possibly a bit late on this one, but I though I’d add some points for who might read this thread;

There are now several Recovery/Undelete/Unformat tools available which are free to download and free to use. Softpedia.com, Download.com and Snapfiles.com (already mentioned) should be where to start searching and all display previous user's ratings of the software, so you don't need to try loads of different software to find which ones work better than others. I’ve put a couple of suggestions for recovery tools at the bottom of this post.

Recovering files to the same disk drive is definitely NOT a good idea, nor is installing software to the same disk drive as it can overwrite data you want to recover, but if that is the only option then recovery software generally won't take up too much space so files lost might be minimal. In this instance the recovery software could have been installed on the D: drive to minimise impact on the C: drive where the delete files were stored.

It should be noted that converting a disk drive file system from FAT32 to NTFS (or vice versa) before recovering your files is absolutely a NO NO. If you are attempting to recover files, keep the file systems the way they are.

In this instance, it 'appears' as if the original post's computer had all the files located in the 'My Documents' folder or other folder(s) on local C: drive (NTFS), with an empty D: drive (FAT32). Although likely that this is a single physical disk that has been partitioned into two disk drives. In this case, if the D: drive was empty, using the convert tool to change the file system would have not impacted on the recovery process, even though only one physical disk, the two partitions are treated separately.

If it occurs, usually software programs have a problem dealing with NTFS file system and not with the older FAT32 file system, possibly the original recovery software used checks to see if the file structure of the destination drive to recover the files to is the same as the original source drive.

Why have a FAT32 D:?

The most likely answer to this is that many computer stores believe that making a C: drive for Windows system files and software only, and a separate D: drive for data files is the way to go. If you fill up your D: drive then it will not impact on the system performance or stability. However in most cases the generally most used 'My Documents' folder is usually still located on the C: drive instead of being redirected to a different location, for example D: drive.

A FAT32 drive is pretty much compatible with most other software and other systems that may want to connect/use it. NTFS on the other hand has much better security and file system model, can also implement restrictions on access as well as file compression (not used by default with Windows XP) and encryption (not used by default with Windows XP). These days NTFS is usually the way to go and my opinion is a single disk drive space.

Mel2surf, you said that ~20 gigabytes of data was recovered to the D: drive but appeared to be globally gook or displayed no content. There is two quick ways to check what a file really is; the most common being to check the file extension, for example Image01.JPG is a Jpeg image file, Track01.MP3 is a MP3 audio file. If file extensions are not being displayed, in Windows Explorer click on menu [Tools] [Folder Options], [View] tab, then untick the 'Hide extensions for known file types'.

However, file extensions just like file names can be renamed or lost, so the second and possibly more conclusive way you can check what a file is this (though be careful what you are doing);

Via Windows Explorer, select a data file to rename and add a .TXT to the end. For example rename a file from Image01.JPG to Image01.JPG.TXT which will make the Windows system believe it is a text file. Open the file by double clicking on it (should open in Notepad) and you should see gibberish, but right at the beginning of the file, as with almost all files in Windows operating systems, there is an identifier. Here are some examples;

Image01.JPG.TXT

Starts with about six funny characters then; JFIF which is the identifier then gibberish.

Icon.GIF.TXT

Starts with GIF87a followed by gibberish.

Picture1.BMP.TXT

Starts with BM6 followed by gibberish.

Track01.MP3.TXT

Starts with ID3 followed by gibberish.

Audio01.WAV.TXT

Starts with; RIFF then a few characters followed by WAVEfmt.

Programs .EXE.TXT or .DLL.TXT

Starts with; MZ followed by gibberish. These are software programs or components, not data files.

Close the file, REMEMBER 'NOT' TO SAVE ANY CHANGES, and rename the file back by removing the .TXT you placed at the end of the file, or to what you think the file should be.

If the identifier at the beginning of the file(s) is just gibberish and offer no clues to the file type, this might indicate that the files on the NTFS C: drive was encrypted, though to date I've never come across a user who has this switched on for their data files. Another possibility could be that an additional program to encrypt files as they are being deleted is installed on the computer, although also unlikely, I have seldom come across this.

Image files recovered from your Internet Explorer browser cache area may not be viewable as standard and can appear as gibberish, but images from other data areas on the disk drive should be viewable, same for other data types.

If you had installed or copied files to the C: drive before recovering your data files, usually the software recovery programs will only recover data it knows is completely intact.

mel2surf; Even though you have wiped the D: drive of the recovered files, the deleted data on the C: drive is essentially still there to be recovered again. Maybe install another recovery program (install to D: drive) and see how that works out.

Possibly try PC Inspector; http://www.pcinspector.de/default.htm?Language=1

There are a couple of tools that people might find useful and are free;

- PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery 4.x; is a data recovery program that supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems. Free to download and free to use. Has help file and it also has an option to view deleted files in text mode or hex mode.

- PC INSPECTOR™ Smart Recovery; to recover data from digital camera memory cards, USB thumb drives, etc. also free.

Another free tool that might be of use is Photo Extractor to recover JPG images.

http://mabusse.bravehost.com/photoextractor.html

Best of luck if you do decide to try again.

Tom.