Does PhotoRec need some that much time?

Using PhotoRec to recover lost data
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frevab
Posts: 10
Joined: 21 Dec 2015, 00:38

Does PhotoRec need some that much time?

#1 Post by frevab »

Hi there

I am trying to recover some files from a HDD.
I am specifically interested in a few files, Outlook .pst file and a Ciel datafile.

I have launched PhotoRec twice but aborted the recovery myself as the time it needed was increasing and increasing.

The first attempt I selected jpg, bmp, txt, pst and Ciel file extensions (added jpg, bmp and txt to make sure it found something although I am not really interested in recovery of these files). It found a lot of files with txt, jpg and bmp but also list files with extensions I have never heard of like .java, .h and .csv and html files I did NOT select.

It did recover some .txt files of 20MB or more which I suspect are not .txt files at all.

In the second attempt I only selected .pst, Office Files and Ciel file and DB files in case the Ciel file is a db file to narrow the search.
It is running now for of 60 hours and so far recovered 82 .doc files, although in the recup_dir are 70 .db files, 5 .xls files and 7 .doc files
It now shows Estimated time to completion 415h56m18......
Should I keep it running or aboard this one as well?

On the last line of the screen are some numbers that are increasing as well. Anyone an idea what they say?

Any help is highly appreciated. Thank you in advance!


I have copied the DOS screen into a txt file a few times to keep track of the changes:

31dec2015 01:11

PhotoRec 7.0, Data Recovery Utility, April 2015
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org

Drive G: - 1000 GB / 931 GiB (RO)
Partition Start End Size in sector
1 * HPFS - NTFS 0 1 1 15138 53 41 243195287


Pass 1 - Reading sector 31126915/243195287, 82 files found
Elapsed time 13h45m52s - Estimated time to completion 93h46m38
doc: 82 recovered


01jan2016 16:24

PhotoRec 7.0, Data Recovery Utility, April 2015
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org

Drive G: - 1000 GB / 931 GiB (RO)
Partition Start End Size in sectors
1 * HPFS - NTFS 0 1 1 15138 53 41 243195287


Pass 1 - Reading sector 31000355/243195287, 82 files found
Elapsed time 52h58m26s - Estimated time to completion 362h36m07
doc: 82 recovered
9853

01jan2016 16:29

Pass 1 - Reading sector 31185340/243195287, 82 files found
Elapsed time 53h03m08s - Estimated time to completion 360h40m09
doc: 82 recovered
3293

02jan2016 00:22

Pass 1 - Reading sector 31033464/243195287, 82 files found
Elapsed time 60h56m09s - Estimated time to completion 416h35m27
doc: 82 recovered
0989846

02jan2016 00:36

Pass 1 - Reading sector 31183984/243195287, 82 files found
Elapsed time 61h10m44s - Estimated time to completion 415h56m18
doc: 82 recovered
6402846

frevab
Posts: 10
Joined: 21 Dec 2015, 00:38

Re: Does PhotoRec need some that much time?

#2 Post by frevab »

I have started a new search but now only with .pst files to be recovered.

It did find 4 files but these were located in the second partition which I already copied the files using TestDisk. It did not find the .pst file that should be on he C (Primary) partition which is the partition I selected to do the search on.

Am I correct to assume PhotoRec searches a whole disk ignoring the partitions and partition selected ?

Does the .pst file definition/signature supports Outlook 2007 at all or only 2003 and older?
How about max_filesize=PHOTOREC_MAX_FILE_SIZE. Can that be a problem as .pst files can be very big (1-2 GB)?

ejey
Posts: 3
Joined: 04 Jan 2016, 02:05

Re: Does PhotoRec need some that much time?

#3 Post by ejey »

I have spent the past few days trying to recover files from a CF card. Initially I ran it on OSX and it took about 3 days to recover files from the 32 GB CF card. I did it again on Linux and it took just under an hour and a half. I'm not sure what that's all about.

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