Drive Rescue

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I am using Drive Rescue to get erased files back from my HD. Now, it seems to have some kind of problem to recover certain kind of files. I don’t know why this happens. e.g.: I delete a jpg from my Desktop, empty the Recycle bin. Go to Drive Rescue, check the deleted files directory, go to WindowsDesktop. Gotcha.
I tell DR to recover the file. Save it in another directory. Everything went fine.
Now, I check the jpg. Double click it so MS Photo Editor (my default app. for jpgs) will try to open it. BUT MSPE says it’s impossible to determine the type (of file). When I try to visualize it with Irfan View, it prompts me with “Unknown File Format!”.
When recovering Word files, I don’t get them back as the original files, but with some kind of header, and the format is messed up.

Note that:
– the deleted Word files status displayed “good” when I tried to recover, so the header shouldn’t be due to a messed up file.
– the deleted jpg files status automatically displayed “poor”, although I had recently erased them and had taken no other action than use Drive Rescue (already open) afterwards.

I don’t know what the “no FAT (consecutive)”, “FAT 1” and “FAT 2” options mean when recovering the file, either. I tried the three and none helped to get the original file back.

Any clues on this? I remember I had good results a while ago using this program but I use it so sparingly I don’t even remember which kind of files I recovered. Fortunately I haven’t had a real data loss issue these days (cross my fingers), but one needs to be prepared.

Thank you very much

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Is your drive highly fragmented? That can make the recovery process more difficult and less reliable.

The FAT file system uses two File Allocation Tables (hence, the acronym FAT). I believe they track where the “next piece” of data is in the file so that DOS, I mean, the operating system kernel, can read them. (The directory only stores the location of the first segment.) The two tables are always supposed to be the same, but in the event of a crash or misalignment of the planets, they can get out of sync. If your software says they are different, well… that’s a bad sign. I’m not sure how a “no FAT” recovery works, but it has been ages since I used any disk utilities; I used to use Mace utilities on DOS 3.x. I guess I’ve gotten used to Windows automatically cleaning up after itself. Probably not something I should rely on totally, but that’s why I make backups.

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Each entry in the FAT, for a file, has a simple link to the next entry, so it is really easy to corrupt the FAT.
FAT/FAT32 are really poorly designed.

NTFS is much better.
Actually, most anything is better than FAT/FAT32.

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jscher, thanks a lot.

I really didn’t know what FAT meant, nor how it worked. After your posts (and not knowing how to eat them ) I had a friend explain FAT to me, and now everything makes sense (though I still don’t know why the data is misrecovered).

The soft doesn’t state FAT 1 is different from FAT 2; I believe it rather lets you choose which you want to use in case they differ.

Greets

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I’m sorry I can’t help you answer your question about Drive Rescue, but if you don’t get anywhere and would like to consider an alternative, you might want to look at Recover4All’s web site. I’m afraid it’s not inexpensive, for a utility that’s used so seldom, but I’ve used it a number of times and it has always worked so far (fingers crossed!) You can download and test it but it will only recover files not in excess of 10K until you register.

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Thanks BigAl.

You’re right, I’d rather stick to freeware for home pc data recovery purposes. I appreciate your input very much.

Greets

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$69 is nothing compared to the cost of replacing lost data.

For recovering accidentally deleted files, such utilities are fine.

However, there’s a significant drawback to using such utilities.

The act of even using the computer causes things to change on at least the C drive and, if different, the drive on which the OS lives.

The only safe way to recover data is to use a professional recovery service such as http://www.ontrack.com[/url%5D, ohterwise you takes your chances.

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I know you’re right, Howard.

Maybe disabling Windows’s File Swap feature would do, but you’d gotta rely 100% on your RAM resources.
In my case, I just want to be able to recover data in my home pc, and though it would be a real pain in the neck not being able to recover a certain file, I don’t store info that critical at home. I also do regular backups.

Yet, It would be interesting to understand why this piece of soft doesn’t do its work as supposed to. It’s very nicely laid out and the interface is pretty straightforward, but…. but… oh well.

Thanks for your input

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Yeah, but there must be something wrong in the wood pile, huh? The web site says it’s “bye, bye birdie time!”

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