1 What software have you used to attempt recovery?
2 What is the file system of the drive you are attempting a recovery on?
4 What is the file system of the operating system drive that you are running the recovery program from?
3 Was just the data deleted or was it an entire partition on the drive that was deleted?

I would recomend creating a disk image as this site suggests prior to trying with other software.

Limitations of FAT32 File System

I’m not aware of any file size limitations in NTFS beyond 4 GB’s as far as recovering deleted files is concerned.
I do see alot of conflicting reports though, but nothing definitive that would outline a specific NTSF limitation more specific that a non professional opinion on some forums.

I would also think it very important and would assume that these large files, like iso files, would be very susceptible to post deletion deterioration and or corruption. The MFT may very well play a part in rewriting itself after file deletion of large files within the NTFS. But I have yet to come across a professional whitesheet that would explain this behavior.

You’ll have to move up to a paid version of a recovery tool that specifically advertises file recovery of file sizes >4 GBs Like this or this.

Paid versions of file recovery tools will offer support and documentation. It would be advised to read through any documentation carefully.

Do not use free tools, many of which have limitations.
Free tools won’t cut it here, if that is what you have been using thus far.

I’m delighted I mentioned R-Studio in the previous post, then! :D:

I too have joined just to sing the praises of R-studio. After clicking a empty folder then “delete” and finding out that somehow windows assumed I meant the entire parent directory I ended up having to go hunting for some way to recover about 25 4.5gb dvd ISO’s. After trying recuve, that I’d used before, it didn’t find anything. I then tried Puran, it found the ISO’s but they were all 0kb. I then happened across R-studio and it did the same thing as Puran. After finding this thread I checked to find the R-studio I had was 5.1. So I grabbed a copy of 5.4 and like magic, they are now found, report as >4gb and are recovering as I write this. Just hope they aren’t corrupt. Thanks so much to this thread, at least I have some shred of hope!

I understand this is a known issue, related to MFTs, but I’ve yet to see a comprehensive explanation, or a solution to recover these files.

I was looking for a solution earlier today and came upon this old thread. Recuva still doesn’t appear to be able to process files > 4gb – it now shows their size (it used to say 0kb), but says there is no data associated with them.

After much hunting and unsuccessfully trying out several other free (and demo) recovery platforms, I found the freeware (GNU) PhotoRec –http://www.cgsecurit…g/wiki/TestDisk

All other software I tried had Recuva’s limitation (most showed the file I wanted as 0kb), but PhotoRec managed to piece together and recover my 5.54gb video file I had accidentally deleted from my 2TB external NFTS drive. All the filename info was gone, but the file itself was intact.

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