Anyone know of any file recovery programs that actually work?

Have you tried this one Kim?
Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download
I used it on my kids computer before and it worked pretty well.

WOW, that is STUPID! The disk drive knows NOTHING about ANYTHING! If a file is restored, it is restored. NO other program should be needed! It is astounding what some will offer. If I were you, I would cross them off my list just for SUGGESTING that.

Maybe they are like the HP printer "tech info" department that kept INSISTING that I should install a windows driver for word perfect on my SCO UNIX system to help my program(Which didn't know how to convey the info, because THEY WOULDN'T ANSWER MY REAL QUESTION) to print in color! The "tech support" that you called probably figured a corrupt file is simply corrupt, and that you could run the standard uncorrupt stuff.

We all know how various word processing documents have info that they put in when you close them. If something happens prior to that, the next open will say something about fixing the file. UNIX caches a lot of stuff so, if it isn't shut down right, it validates the disk and updates the cache, the next time it boots, which takes a long time. But that doesn't mean they can fix ANYTHING else!

Actually, if you even leave the computer on, it is doing a lot, and who knows WHAT antivirus programs do. Basically, if it creates 3GB of temp space, that is 3GB of space on your disk CHANGED. f one of those spots happened to have data you want to recover, it is GONE! Luckily, most files WILL be temp files and once they are deleted, it may reuse THAT space.

As for selecting programs? I just HAPPENED to have looked at office depot. Only ONE sounded like it might do this, but it only made one statement. I ALMOST bought it when some idiot at the store said I could return it if it didn't work. I checked! I would have to determine it didn't work by not opening the box, etc... So I didn't bother. The safest way to avoid this, unfortunately, is to BACKUP.

I wish I could suggest something, but I never had enough of a need to take the chance to try them. I actually WROTE one for Apple II. 8-) I never bothered to adapt it to the IBM PC though. On the apple, there was simply a character at a certain part of the filename, and the FAT. I wish you luck!

Steve

WHICH program? File recovery programs should only be written by people that KNOW what they are doing! MS has written at least 3 variants of the FAT based(AKA windows) file systems. And at least the later ones have REDUNDANCY! Also, the later ones allow CLUSTERS! If you don't know specifics about that, it may work on SOME systems, but NOT all. The Windows NT systems can have VTOC based systems. SIMILAR, but DIFFERENT! BTW M/S doesn't sell windows anymore. They haven't for YEARS! The last WINDOWS O/S was windows ME(not to be confused with windows 2000 which was windows NT and even alluded to that in small print on the startup screen). What they call WINDOWS now is really windows NT. And YEAH, under some circumstances, they may even be HOSTED on FAT based systems, they CAN use VTOC. Windows called the FAT systems FAT, FAT32, etc... The VTOC ones are called NTFS.

Anyway, my point is that if he wrote an early fat system that didn't do sanity checks, for example, it may work on ALL 32MB FAT systems PERFECTLY, but CORRUPT all others! It may fail even on a 2GB FAT system, since they would then have clusters, etc... Forgive me if specifics are off, it HAS been a long time. My point is valid though.

Steve

Kim, what is the difference between that and the system restore?

I realize system restore puts EVERYthing back.

But in general what is the biggest difference between these 'image' programs and the restore function?

Thanks

Jim

Thanks Kim

Just one more question...related to your answer.

Any others & I'll pm you (so as not to annoy others)

So the image can be be put on something separate (cd, Hd, etc.., (unlike recovery)...and that would be the big difference...am I correct?

I actually have a bit of experience with recovery...but not the 'image' programs...

Thank you, Micheal

So my understanding of my question might actually have been backwards to what I thought, ie: Windows only recovering Windows and not everything, as I thought. The image software actually keeping a more thorough record...I'm assuming this would be correct.

I saw the recommendation for Prevx and I thought I would offer another solution for anyone concerned with viruses. This is the exact setup I use, and offer to all of my customers and have sold them on, 100% of the time. This will offer better protection than any paid antivirus/antispyware that I know of. It is relatively lightweight, and I can get on the most malicious sites on the web and never leave with more than a couple cookies.

The best part about it is, it's all 100% FREE.

First of all, running an antivirus program is not necessary with this setup, but it does save you a couple mouse clicks every now and again.

Install Avast free antivirus(I choose Avast because it's somewhat light & free)
Install Zone Alarm basic(manual firewall, - certified MS autorun,zones internet)
Install peerblock and create custom block lists(spyware,threats,hijacked,etc.)
Install Spybot S&D(run as admin,run integration,run teatimer,update,immunize)

I'm sure some of you have been using Spybot way longer than I have, and some of you have probably never heard of it. In my opinion it is the best pc protection you can get, free or paid.

If you are not completely satisfied you will receive a 100% refund.

there also at least used to be a robotic cd library system. they are almost like massive jukeboxes, able to place and recover cds.

My problem is that *I* have to multitask too much. If you can organize things well, you ca have a "current" area that constantly changes. For MOST people, that would be TINY! You could back that up EVERY DAY if you wanted. Even to a SAN flash card! The REST you could back up when you make MAJOR changes, like every year.

Steve

I had been complaining about the lack of good data recovery software, until a friend recommended File Scavenger and I've used it ever since. Believe me I know how you feel, when you run these programs that take hours and show poor results. The one thing I learned from trying out all these different data recovery programs is that, if you see fancy bells and whistles, usually the publisher probably spent more time on aesthetics than quality programming and functionality.

Insert real life experience here:

Thinking about old data recovery methods reminds me of a pretty funny story I'll share with you. I'll call this one- the data recovery from hell! This happened to me on one of my first data recovery jobs I had. It was a standard boot sector fix & upgrade from vista to 7 after a bad virus infestation, nothing major. I'm not going as far to say the guy is cheap, but he wanted to save a few bucks At the time I was doing data transfer dirt cheap for like $30 bucks, and he chose to let his daughter do it instead. Needless to say, some very sensitive files(lawyers documents specifically) "didn't" get transferred. So $30 turned into $30/hr, and back then I think I was using Icare data recovery and it just happened to be a 620+ gig HDD. I think it took almost 5 hours to run and it found about 55 partitions

NEEDLESS TO SAY, THIS GUY WAS ALREADY PISSED!

...but now here's the kicker. Out of these 55+ partitions I never found a single one of the documents he was wanting recovered. So what gives? Well so it turned out, he suddenly remembered these documents were emails. So the documents he wanted never even existed on his computer, except maybe in cache memory long long ago. Ok well that's easy enough right? I'll just get in his email and done. No, it couldn't be that easy could it. It was microsoft Essentials or some email client left over from his xp to vista upgrade, which stubbornly refused to be forwarded through another account for security reasons. There is no version available for Windows 7 since it changed to Windows Live, but still determined and nearly out of steam I install XP virtual machine on my laptop. After I spend another hour cracking the password, I am finally in his old email account. At this point it didn't really surprise me to see that he did not have a single piece of mail in his inbox. I still don't understand why these emails disappeared into the black hole of the internet, but I guess inactivity had turned this email account into a ghost.

Boo

That does not sound very promising, but there are definitely instances you can restore "poor" status files. I would much rather it say "poor" than "very poor" or "corrupt/unreadable". I'm not going to tell you to buy it because I can't promise you it will work, but there is definitely close to a 40% chance if I had to guess.
I'm not sure I can really offer a "better" solution, but here are several more alternatives:

DiskDoctor
Easus
Icare
Runtime get data back
winmend

Kim Just PM me your email and I'll send you some info I think would be helpful

Here are my recommendations: TestDisk and PhotoRec. Although the name "PhotoRec" implies that it is for recovery of digital photographs, it is a little misleading since the program can be used to recover other types of files.

You said that you tried some file recovery software. Did you install that software on the same hard disk drive that the lost files are on?

Phil

try the txt files first. Do THEY look right? If they are scrambled, or have blocks missing, you can bet things are TRASHED!

Steve

Just to reiterate. As I and at least one other person said/impled, a running system is subject to reusing space. One of the WORST systems to try to recover files like this from is windows, because of all that goes on.

So honestly, you shoulld EXPECT some problems such as you have. I WOULD suggest looking at TXT files. If they generally show all the data, GREAT! Forget what I just said. If they show some multiple of around 256 bytes of data that is bad, I am RIGHT, and there is probably NO hope!

Of course, you MIGHT be able to recover PARTS. Like maybe some of your kids pictures will seem ok, but be missing the bottom or top. AGAIN though, the TOP generally has info required to do ANYTHING else with the picture. They are usually compressed(INTERNALLY to save space, so YOU never really have to know), and the tag directory is either at the beginning or the end. AND, if it is at the end, a pointer in the TOP points to it. So if you lose the first block, you may not be able to recover ANYTHING in some files. ALSO, any routine capable of causing any kind of corruption to the file could do worse.

So don't be very quick to blame the restore program. Undeleting a file is generally minor and simple housekeeping that a 3 year old could easily do if they had the control. Repairing a partially incomplete gif file can be VERY complicated and even the smartest and most capable person may take hours to have modest success, if any at all.

BTW the one BRIGHT spot is that pictures can be LARGE. If you miss data in the MIDDLE, the picture may be recoverable with only part of the picture damaged. If it is something you don't REALLY need, maybe you'll be ok.

Steve

If a recovery program took up all the space on the drive you are trying to recover data from, you can stop now. The chances of recovery are like 0.000009%! And the chances are like 99.999% that if you recover ANY more, it won't be much. And I am being overly optimistic there! Remember, the OS will REUSE disk space before declaring it is FULL!

And even using an EXTERNAL drive won't keep your boot drive clean. Windows has maintenance that it does even if you do NOTHING, it stores the registry info, temp files, and even some intermediate work files.

Steve

Kim,

A program called "SpinRite" has been successfully used here to recover files for another person who needed the files for litigation purposes.

Well, I know it isn't much help, but my stepmother has a business where she has a number of employees. They are STILL running on the system I wrote about 11 years ago! Anyway, my father told me they just got back and found that someone deleted all their customers! LUCKILY, he has it backed up every hour via mosy, and managed to get back up!

Steve