21 replies to this topic

[dkalive]

I recently installed the latest version of Recuva on my Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 computer. I have 4 GB of RAM and a quad core processor.

I have chosen to just scan for music in my documents but the scan seems to be taking at least two hours to reach towards the end of the scan. The scan doesn't actually finish at all, it just goes to 99% or 100% and uses around 3.3GB of RAM and doesn't do anything after that. I can't restore any files because if I just leave it running it doesn't go anywhere and pressing cancel does exactly the same.

What could be causing this to happen?

[Alan_B]

Are you using 32 bit or 64 bit Windows ?

Is 3.3 GB the total RAM in use by everything running on the system,
or is this what Task Manager shows against the Recuva process in the Processes Tab ?

I cannot advise on the RAM needs of Recuva, but your answers might be relevant to those who can.

[dkalive]

I'm using 64 bit and the 3.3 GB RAM is what the Task Manager is saying Recuva is using.

It starts of relatively low but slowly works it's way up to that.

[Alan_B]

Sorry, 32 bit Windows was my only shot.
I will have to leave this one for experts

[dkalive]

Alan_B, on 09 February 2012 - 06:49 AM, said:

Sorry, 32 bit Windows was my only shot.
I will have to leave this one for experts

Haha thanks anyway Alan

[DennisD]

Hi dk, and welcome to the forum.

Don't have a definitive answer for you, but how big is the drive you're trying to recover from, or more to the point from your post, are you talking about a huge quantity of music files you're trying to get back?

My first thoughts are to make sure you have nothing else running which doesn't need to run, and ensure that the Page File is set to it's maximum size, whatever that may be.

It sounds like you haven't had an "out of memory" pop up from Recuva otherwise I think you would have mentioned that.

Are we talking about deleted files here, or is it a drive or partition gone wrong on you?

[dkalive]

Hey Dennis,

Thanks for the welcome!

The drive is a 1TB drive but I'm just trying to scan the 'My Documents' directory. It's only a few GB worth of music really, a few hundred songs or something. I made sure that there wasn't anything else running when I ran the scan but haven't tried altering the Page File size at all yet to be honest.

It's deleted files. I uninstalled something and it deleted the directory! (Grrr!)

[DennisD]

As a guide, your page file can be more or less 1.5 times the size of your RAM if that helps.

I forgot to ask, are you using deep scan, because that will find thousands of files. If yes, try a normal scan. If no, have a try if possible to target a smaller batch of files.

When scanning with "Tree View" set in "Options\Actions", you should be able to target a smaller set of folders, well within what could be memory issues caused by trying to scan all your lost files in one go.

I personally, some time back, had greater success recovering music files\folders in small batches ...

http://forum.pirifor...ndpost&p=146564

It might not help with your particular issue, but worth a try.

Recuva is supposed to now better handle drives >1TB, so it's just a question of finding what will work for you which may in turn lead to why you're getting that problem.

And you may also get more useful input from one or more of the other guys if they've had experience with this issue.

Searching back gives a lot of "out of memory" threads, but you haven't hit that yet.

Have a try with my suggestions, and see how it goes.

[dkalive]

Yes I was running a Deep Scan because the normal one didn't seem to be picking up any files at all.

I'll give it all a try tomorrow and get back to you.

[Nergal]

Deep scan on a 1TB . This action may take a multitude of days, during which you will want to make sure NOTHING else is running off the drive or writing to the drive because it WILL change the recoverablity of items from what they are listed as (excellent/Bad) in recuva

[dkalive]

Uh oh... Not good! So really it's probably the best idea to just forget about the files I think? Haha

[dkalive]

I tried the Tree View thing as you mentioned but that seems to do exactly the same thing as I described in my first post. Is this going to be impossible?

[dkalive]

I have just tried adding a extra 1GB of RAM to my system and that seemed to do the trick. I did the deep scan but it doesn't seem to be picking up the directory that had the music? What would be the reason for this?

[DennisD]

I'm not too sure as to why it isn't picking up your music directory, assuming you're talking about the "My Music" folder inside "My Documents". (My XP folder structure)

I've just done a normal scan of my C: drive, and my "My Music" folder hasn't been picked up by Recuva simply because I don't keep music files there, therefore nothing deleted for a long long time, nothing to display.

And offhand that's the only reason I can think of as to why a folder isn't picked up in a Recuva normal scan.

Try going into "Options\Actions" and check everything.

Do a normal scan, and if nothing positive comes from that try a deep scan. Keep the "Tree View" setting, as it will enable you to quickly navigate to the folders/files you're looking for.

One vague thought is are you accessing the computer from the same account which created the files originally. I've never had anything other than my admin account on my PC so I don't actually know if scanning for files from a limited account would make a difference when scanning for files created by an admin account.

Yea, very shaky, but I'm struggling to find a reason for the non appearance of any files. Unless they were deleted some time ago, and have been overwritten.

And in the meantime minds infinitely superior to mine may come up with a more plausible explanation.

[Augeas]

A deep scan will not necessarily find the files you want in My Music or any folder.

A Normal scan will find deleted file records in the MFT: these records contain a folder MFT record number. Thus a directory structure can be built up and presented by Recuva, if all the components are present.

A Deep scan will run a Normal scan first and then continue scanning each unallocated cluster on the disk, looking for file signatures. However these clusters, with a file sig of say PNG, will be presented as a picture file but will not hold any folder information, as the folder info is held in the MFT folder record. You are likely to get a C:\?\ in the Path column. (Recuva does manage to create some folder structures for slightly more files than it finds in a Normal scan, but I'm not sure of the mechanics of this.) So searching on a path name with a deep scan is likely to be disappointing.

If you can't find the My Music folder in a normal scan then (I guess) that the MFT folder record for My Music was deleted along with the files, as you imply, and then that deleted folder record was reused for another file. There will then be no folder associated with your music files, and although you may find most of the files with a normal scan the folder reference number will be invalid and Recuva will not be able to associate them with My Music. Phew!

[dkalive]

Thanks for all your help everything. I think I'll have to class these files as lost unfortunately by the sounds of things.

[Nergal]

hold up I didn't mean to stop your search.  perhaps, though it has only just occurred to me, I should have said, if this is a system drive plug it into a different computer, as a slave drive & run the long days search that way.  if it's not a system drive just don't use the drive til it's finished & be sure to recover to not the TB drive, then once done test each of the songs

when I did this, I was actually able to save 95% of the music files, though I didn't have 1TB.  second if this is windows 7 did you check the "previous versions" tab of folder properties?

[dkalive]

Yeah I did try the Previous Versions tab but it didn't show anything for that.

[dkalive]

Augeas, on 10 February 2012 - 06:37 PM, said:

A deep scan will not necessarily find the files you want in My Music or any folder.

A Normal scan will find deleted file records in the MFT: these records contain a folder MFT record number. Thus a directory structure can be built up and presented by Recuva, if all the components are present.

A Deep scan will run a Normal scan first and then continue scanning each unallocated cluster on the disk, looking for file signatures. However these clusters, with a file sig of say PNG, will be presented as a picture file but will not hold any folder information, as the folder info is held in the MFT folder record. You are likely to get a C:\?\ in the Path column. (Recuva does manage to create some folder structures for slightly more files than it finds in a Normal scan, but I'm not sure of the mechanics of this.) So searching on a path name with a deep scan is likely to be disappointing.

If you can't find the My Music folder in a normal scan then (I guess) that the MFT folder record for My Music was deleted along with the files, as you imply, and then that deleted folder record was reused for another file. There will then be no folder associated with your music files, and although you may find most of the files with a normal scan the folder reference number will be invalid and Recuva will not be able to associate them with My Music. Phew!

I'm assuming if it displayed in the 'C:\?\' it would still detect that it was music?

[dkalive]

I went through the ''C:\?\'' directory and found a majority of my music but when I have recovered it, a lot of the tracks have been chopped up into the end, or the start or whatever. Is this normal?