Undeleting files on HDD

carlmart

Gawd
Joined
Sep 17, 2006
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About a week ago I deleted the files inside a folder on an HDD.

Immediately I stopped recording anything on it to avoid deleting information. The folder size was large, about 2TB, and there were large video files on it.

Then I proceeded to try several ways to undelete the files, first with Windows programs and then with Linux programs.

No luck installing recovering programs in Linux, which I understood was the most effective way to do it.

So I tried two Windows programs: Recuva and Recoverit, both in full versions.

With Recuva I got a list of all the files on the folder, but the larger ones all are tagged as "irrecoverable". The only ones I could recover were those up to 3.5Gb, and some of the subtitle files, srt, are not complete.

So what about I had read that you could recover anything, as long as you didn't use the HDD space?

Is there any other program that is worth trying and very effective at recovering deleted files?
 
I've used a lot of different file recovery programs but I've had the best luck with paid versions of software rather than freeware. EaseUs Data Recovery, GetDataBack, and Active@ file recovery have all served me well over the years. Most programs have a demo mode but it might prove to be difficult in your case with filesizes so large. Most demos might let you recover up to a certain filesize to test.
 
Autopsy is a free forensic suite that can do File Carving and it'll rebuild larger files that have a lot of pointers.
 
R-tools.

As mentioned you will likely be paying money for something that actually works.

Also, great time to get proper backups going of your systems(s)
 
Autopsy is a free forensic suite that can do File Carving and it'll rebuild larger files that have a lot of pointers.
Installed Autopsy, but I can't find it!
From a little I have read, it's far from easy to use it.
 
I've had luck with getdataback for NFTS from runtime.
I've had decent luck with file and full folder structure recovery with even from windows reinstall.
 
RTools shows zero data on the large files, same as all other programs did. I can't understand how that is possible.

What kind of recovery is that then? Nothing was written on this HDD after the delete, so shouldn't the files be there or at least something to be recovered? Why only files below 3.5GB and not those above that?
 
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