Recuva cannot determine file system

[TechnoDino]

Trying to recover data from a Western Digital drive (WD Caviar; SATA; 160 G).  I have set recuva to check for undeleted files.  The drive is recognized by Windows 8.1.  Recuva scans one drive fine.  When it tries to scan the drive I am trying to recover, the following error:

 

HarddiskVolume 3: unable to determine file system type

 

and stops.  File system is NTFS.

 

I'm open to suggestions.

 

John

[BCR15TECH]

HI John,

 

Even though I have used the Piriform software suite (free versions) for years, I've had no need to contact them or this forum with any problems - until now.  I went looking in the Recuva section and came across your situation.  I have the same problem - although it may be a little different.

 

Last Friday, I was attempting to erase my old zip100 disks and accidently chose my 500GB external hard drive.  In about 10 seconds I realized my mistake and cancelled the reformat.  I was using the Drive Wiper option in CCleaner.  Windows still recognized the drive as "E:" but accessing the drive was not possible windows said the drive was not formatted and asked if I wanted to.  Of course I said No.  Recuva also gave me the reply "unable to determine file system type" - no matter what check bobxes I checked.

 

After some web searching, the drive manufacturure has teamed up with Seagate for drive and data recovery support.  I chatted with a tech support guy and he indicated the first thing the format process does is wipe out the file system designation and then starts to format the data area.

 

I think Recuva wants to see a completely reformatted drive, not a partial one - like mine.  I also believe one of the last things the format process does is lay down the file system architecture.  So, to get there, I'm thinking, the whole drive needs to be reformatted before Recuva will work properly.

 

For me and maybe you, another software is required to look past the missing file system data to search for all the data files.  I don't feel like formatting the drive.

 

Seagate has one and will work with any drive manufacture ($100).  I also went web searching and came across one from EaseUS ($100).  The free version works well and seems to have found everythng I lost.  Note, it took over 24 hours to do the deep scan - that's OK by me.  However, the free version will only allow you to recover 1GB of data.

 

Well, I hope this helps.

 

Regards...

 

Garry