I had Recuva premium before (paid version)

[Sober0782]

I have used Recuva in the past and it worked pretty well.    this time I downloaded the free version  and tried to recover some important Photographs  from my external drive that some how got deleted    I  took it to the folder and it said 60 k files  found  I ran both the  regular and the advanced  and it came back blank    Not one single file showed  up.    

I had selected  K:\People\Friends|Misc Friends\Other friends\Friends    as the folder I wanted to scan.   It scanned over 8 hours and came up blank NO Photos  at all..   not a single recovered file    ? 

 

any idea as to  why  from some one ?  I have used recuva many times  before with good results especailly the paid version   but I tried it on two different desktop PCs and two different working back  up  drives  same results

 

Win 10   both 32 and 64  bit  OS   

16 gb  memory    intel I3 3.4 cpu  1tb seagate external  HDs 

 

thank  you for any advice

 

 

[DennisD]

Hi Sober0782, and welcome to the forum.

 

I don't have an answer for you and was watching to see if someone else did. As you've had no responses I can only suggest an outside possibility and maybe a way to check it out.

 

I'm wondering about the level of folders in which you have that data stored. I know from my own Sony Walkman that it will only read music files down to a certain folder level, and after that it won't find them. Your data is buried 5 levels down and without checking with the devs or doing a test myself I don't know if Recuva has a limit on how deep it will go.

 

Can I suggest trying a different program as a test to see if it can come up with anything?

 

I would suggest the very powerful and completely free "PhotoRec 7".

 

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

 

This utility now has a GUI which makes it's use much easier than previous versions, and although it looks simple, it is as I say a powerful tool. It comes in the same download as "TestDisk".

 

The GUI version of PhotoRec is the file named "qphotorec_win.exe". Double click to run it.

 

Have a try and see if you have more success, and post back how you get on.

 

Hope that helps.

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention, the free version is as capable as the paid one as far as scanning is concerned.

[Augeas]

I always think it's a mistake to specify a folder - or anything really - in the path box. The scan will take no longer as all the disk has to be scanned whether there's anything selected or not, and if you do specify a path then if any of the folders in the path have been deleted and overwritten then nothing will be found.

 

There will of course be many more deleted files found, but in advanced mode file names and paths can be entered in the Filename/Path box to filter the results however you wish without having to rescan. You can also search on date or size etc.

 

What does 'I  took it to the folder and it said 60 k files  found' mean?

[Sober0782]

Thank you for your advice    I will try both as they are very important unreplaceable files .   All are Jpeg files .  

60k    is actually 60,000   files found     but non came up on the final screen     sorry for the confusion.   I have always had good luck with recuva in the past.     

 

what happened is that  I have all my files backed up to 1 internal hard drive and 2 external hard drives.   but I some how in the process lost one file completely.  with about 300  Jpeg photos in it.  as I was doing a cut and paste to from the original drive to  the reformatted external drive.    It was operator error    smile.   and it so happened that it was one of my most precious files of a friend in china who was on  a teacher exchange to the  united states for a year.   

[DennisD]

If you weren't using a file transfer program such as TeraCopy for example, which will verify the integrity of the copied file before deleting the source, I would suggest to never "cut and paste" but "copy and paste" instead. Test the copy and only then delete the source.

 

I do a lot of large file moving, and have used the free version of TeraCopy for many years. And although I'm told comparing hashes of source and target files (which is what TeraCopy does), isn't a cast iron guarantee of a perfectly cloned copy, I've never yet lost a file. And I hope sods law doesn't jump up and bite me for daring to say that. 

 

Good luck with your search.