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Recover deleted files

Posted: 22 Aug 2024 20:48
by lahums
Hi guys,

In the "I'm new" section I explain what happened, but the situation is I'm trying to recover a lot of files I deleted from both my laptop and my recycle bin a long while ago. I used several services like Recoverit (even payed for some of them), but either couldn't find the files or recovered them only to find out I couldn't play them. I now realize I didn't try to fix all of my drives, so I want to give it a final go. However, I'm very hesitant to pay for a service that will likely be fruitless again.

Does anyone know
1) if there are any free file recovery services I can use, or what the best way is to handle this?
2) how to repair the broken files once I actually have them on my laptop again?

Re: Recover deleted files

Posted: 23 Aug 2024 11:01
by cumfan
Hi, to give good advice some more info is needed:
1) which operating system (and file system) do you use, e.g. windows 10 with an NTFS formatted drive etc.
2) did you proceed to use the hard-drive/volume after you deleted the files (if you still do it, please stop asap)?

Re: Recover deleted files

Posted: 25 Aug 2024 21:40
by lahums
Hi,

Because I wasn't actually sure what an NTFS formatted drive was, I Googled this yesterday and it led me to a file recovery program. I used it on my drive and recovered about 1,000 MP3 files. Unfortunately, all of them were unplayable (not a big surprise, because I deleted them somewhere last year and have been using the drive regularly since then). I then used several file repair programs, every single one of them told me the file format was wrong. Finally, I used HxD to examine the file headers. This is how I found out that all of the files only cainted 00's.

So apparently the audio files weren't actually recoverable, they were just empty husks...so unless there is a hero on this forum who has a bright idea to undo my mistake, I'm afraid my recovery mission has definitively failed.

A real shame, but there's only one thing for me to do I guess: go hunt for some new recordings ;)

Re: Recover deleted files

Posted: 26 Aug 2024 07:58
by cumfan
Okay, thanks for trying but it sounds like the content is actually lost. To have a closer look one would actually need the physical drive, but if you used it regularly for quite some time since then, chances are unfortunately very low for any successful retrieval.

But starting a new hunt sounds good! 😁