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Recovery after deleting "System Volume Information", "$Recycle.bin", "Recycler" folders

Posted: 03 Feb 2017, 13:09
by Borea
- While testing my Maxtor-External-Backup drive (750 GB) with my AV application, it took a long time checking “$Recycle.bin”, “Recycler” and “System Volume Information” folders. So, unfortunately, I deleted everything inside those 3 files (!).

- After that, the external drive looked TOTALLY EMPTY.

- Since that accident, I never re-formatted or re-partitioned the disk. Never changed, modified, touched MBR or anything.

- Never recovered anything onto the drive itself.

- I did not format the disk when I purchased it about 6 years ago. I just started using it.

- Before the accident, I always had only one big partition on the disk.

- Curerntly disk is in perfect condition.

- Chkdisk utility does not report any errors.

- I have tested the following software for recovery: Recuva, Seagate Data Recovery, Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery, Zero Assumption Recovery (ZAR), Active@ File Recovery, R-Studio and TestDisk - v7.0.win.

- Some of them found some of the folders that I had deliberately deleted sometime before that accident.

- “photorec_win” and "R-Studio" found most of the 432 movie files that existed on the disk at the time of the accident. R-Studio also identified most of the other files but without file system structure and original titles.

- So I believe all my folders and files are still intact on the disk.

- There are some valuable software projects with hundreds of tiny system and project files and thousands of documents on that external disk that I would really like to recover.

- When the “TestDisk - v7.0.win” program started analyzing the disk, first it displayed a NTFS partition. Then it discovered a FAT16 partition and then it discovered FAT32 partition and finally said those 3 partitions are not recoverable.

- I have studied the manual of TestDisk and checked forum pages, but I have not encountered a similar case. So, I do not know how to proceed.

- Before giving up, I would appreciate any advice, help to recover my files and folders with proper titles and file structure, using TestDisk or with any other software.

- I may provide screen shots of TestDisk scanning process and also Testdisk.log file.

Thanks.

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Re: Recovery after deleting "System Volume Information", "$Recycle.bin", "Recycler" folders

Posted: 03 Feb 2017, 16:39
by cgrenier
What is the result of TestDisk, Advanced, Undelete ?

Re: Recovery after deleting "System Volume Information", "$Recycle.bin", "Recycler" folders

Posted: 03 Feb 2017, 20:29
by Borea
Thanks for the quick response.

I assume you asked the result of the following steps:

(Without pre-scanning)
1) TestDisk, Select Drive (Q:)
2) Proceed, Intel, Advanced, Undelete

Result:

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