Thank you... I was concerned about recuva writing to a Windows 7 file system. If it does not understand the Windows 7 enhancements/extensions, then it may muck up the file system in writing the files to the recovery target. But I guess it does not matter if it is just a transient file system to be abandoned after the recovered files are copied off. If there any problems cropped up, I could create it as an XP file system.
Another way occurred to me, and it worked perfectly. It avoids all issues. Instead of recovering from the in-place boot Windows 7 file system on my laptop, running from a full-fledged throw-away Windows 7 system to recover a block for block copy (image) of the damaged file system on another (external) drive. I captured an image of the file system to a file for safe keeping, then dumped it to an identically sized partition on an external drive. I boot the laptop, so that it running *real* Windows 7, and recover the files from the partition on the external drive. I don't care that the running copy of Windows will tromp all over my data, since I have both the copy on the external drive that I am recovering from, and a safe copy in a file somewhere else. This system will have *all* Windows 7 capabilities to host Recuva! If I mess up somehow, I can restore my image and try again. Best of all worlds.
So:
Make image copy (Linux dd) of file system to be recovered and save it securely:
dd if=/dev/sda1 | gzip -c > preciousImage.gz
Get size of partition:
cat /proc/partitions | grep sda1
Create NTFS partition on an external drive of the same size (Larger would be fine too) (Could be done with any partitioning utility, as long as you set the partition type to NTFS/HFS).
gunzip -c < preciousImage.gz > /dev/sde1
Boot the PC. It will scribble all over the unused blocks with your data on the C: drive. If that disk was damaged and not bootable, you can replace the disk and reinstall Windows.
Run Recuva, pointing it to the partition on the external drive with your image snapshot. Recover the files, copying them to either *another* external drive, or to c:, or wherever you want them. All Recuva dialogs etc. will work just fine.
Hope this helps someone!
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Related but new subject.
I would argue that Recuva should work with *whatever* is provided by the repair/recover mode of the Windows distribution disk. If it cannot provide a library routine or supporting capabilities to browse the disk, then Recuva should have that code. By nature of its mission in life, it is going to be trying to run in restricted environments from boot media.
It would be really nice if there were a Recuva.iso that can be booted to recover, but I understand that there would be licensing problems, requiring alot of work re-writing all of the Windows functions depended on, or hosting Recuva on another system such as Linux.
Note also, as I am sure the author knows, there is another dialog that doesn't work either (I forget which one).
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Recuva is an outstanding piece of software, very well designed and easy to use. The documentation is simple and clear. Thank you! One of the best I have seen. I will certainly be making a donation.
