Directory lost

[BabuNiki]

On an external hard disk I had stored hundreds of video files (tv series, seasons and episodes). One day the directory had disappeared from view, although - I guess - all files were still present. And I hadn't stored anything new.

 

I tried recuva to bring back those lost files. And it did. But all the files had lost their names. Instead the files carry numbers.

 

Is there a way to get the names of the video files back?

[Augeas]

I presume you ran a deep scan? The file names are something like [00123].wmv (or whatever extension is relevant)? I also presume the disk is NTFS?

 

If yes to both, then unless the file name is embedded in the data (which I would consider to be unusual) then there is no way to reconstruct the file names. The file names are held in the directory, and if the directory has gone then so have the file names.

 

To heap Pelion upon Ossa, if you recover files found from a deep scan, then you will only recover the first extent (as Recuva cannot identify subsequent extents). Video files are mostly large, so are more likely to be fragmented, making recovery very difficult.