only finding txt, edb, reg, tx? - what's up??

Using PhotoRec to recover lost data
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cjack99
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Joined: 26 Mar 2016, 16:52

only finding txt, edb, reg, tx? - what's up??

#1 Post by cjack99 »

Good Day; New to the forum, new to trying to recover lost files. In spite of leaving the file extension options at default (find everything), PhotoRec is only finding and recovering .txt; .edb; .reg; and .tx? It's been scanning almost 24hrs, and it has found just under a million files. Problem is, not a single .exe or .doc or any other usable file is in the recovery; obviously I have something wrong, or the drive is just total trash, not sure what to do next (after it completes of course). I know nothing about how to assemble those million files into anything useful.

Ideas?

Here is the brief painful synopsis: HDD apparently failed during a win10 overnight update. After exhausting all the "command" options such as chkdsk, bootrec, diskpart, bootsec, and on, none of which worked (mostly reporting drive locked, unmountable, or I/O error, depending on command). Resorted to UBCD, which, using partedmagic, actually showed some hope, I could see file structure and files. Started attempting to fix using testdisk, and in one of the commands, don't recall which, it began a scan, and during that scan it just stopped. After that it reported the drive as failed (before that the drive was reporting, about to fail), and then nothing would display in regards to files, partitions, etc. So I began using photorec as an attempt at data recovery, and there I am.

thanks for any ideas.

cheers
cactus

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cgrenier
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Re: only finding txt, edb, reg, tx? - what's up??

#2 Post by cgrenier »

You need to chose [Whole] after selecting the partition.
Was your disk encrypted ?
The IO errors and the report about the disk about to failed worry me. I wonder if the disk reads anything correctly at all.

cjack99
Posts: 4
Joined: 26 Mar 2016, 16:52

Re: only finding txt, edb, reg, tx? - what's up??

#3 Post by cjack99 »

Hi Thanks for the reply. I'm a total novice at this, and probably grasping at straws I'll never get my hands on. An intelligent individual would have been doing backups of his important data, but,,,,, apathy creeps in you know. Anyway, the entire event was a shock, to find the blue screen of death. Windows did it's own automatic thing several times before it gave up. Then I tried the stuff with the win recovery disk, that's where it was saying the drive was unmountable, and then chkdsk failed with the I/o error, yada yada. This was a last ditch effort.

The partition was there first time I looked at it with partedmagic (from the UBCD) along with folder titles, etc. So I tried to fix the mbr with testdisk methinks it was. Somewhere the partition info went away as test disk was doing a scan, and it aborted. Next time I looked "drive about to fail" had changed to "drive has failed".

Using photorec 7 from win, didn't really see any partition info. It starts out with select a media, but I may have picked the wrong one, it lists several, sda (which is my new drive) sdb (the bad one) and then 3 drives, C: E: F:, these apparently are coming from the partition data, because they match the boot partition, the C drive, and a hidden partition. Pretty sure I selected whole. I think I first tried selecting sdb, so, I'm going to try once more, this time selecting C, and see if anything is different. Data was not encrypted btw. Fingers crossed, and thanks again for your input.
cactus
ps - I'll report back

cjack99
Posts: 4
Joined: 26 Mar 2016, 16:52

Re: only finding txt, edb, reg, tx? - what's up??

#4 Post by cjack99 »

Update; well, thankfully I did not go through with my c: selection, what a dope, c: is my good drive that I installed 2 days ago! But ----

I did another boot from UBCD and opened partedmagic. In the upper left where the drive icons are, I of course find my new 2 TB drive, and the failed 1 TB drive next to it. I opened the file utility in upper left, and at the root level I can see both drives, they both show NTFS file system, and I still see all my previous drives folders. An option in file utility allows "copy" and "paste". I also ran clone disk and stepped through that set up, it also sees the file types and partition of the old drive, and allows selection of the failed drive as source and new drive as destination. This works both for full drive and partition. Now I have 2 questions to ask, since I'm a noob and all.

1 - It appears that I could copy and paste selected data from old to new, using the file utility, although it would be time consuming..... yes? Doing this would be slow, and I would have to re-install all my programs, but the .exe's are there, so it looks do-able. This would give a new registry and a chance to really clean house. If it would work.

2 - I could use clone drive to bring the data over, but it would also bring with it the garbage, and it seems to me it would overwrite the windows install I have on the new drive with the old windows install, but they are both win10, so that's about a toss up. I would then have to reparation the new drive, since roughly half of it would now be "unallocated" based on what the drive clone software displays. I'm guessing this would not screw up the new drive by "cloning" any bad sectors. Do I have this correct?

Assuming I'm not nuts, any advice on which way to go with this? It's pretty easy to test the folder copy, but seems like trying the clone I'm either all in, or not, no way to back out of it.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks
cactus

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cgrenier
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Re: only finding txt, edb, reg, tx? - what's up??

#5 Post by cgrenier »

If you clone the bad disk, everything on the destination will be overwritten.

cjack99
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Joined: 26 Mar 2016, 16:52

Re: only finding txt, edb, reg, tx? - what's up??

#6 Post by cjack99 »

Thanks for that response, I sort of figured that out,,, but what I'm asking is, will it create the bad sectors and bad partition of the bad drive, or does it just overwrite the data? Sorry for not being more clear.

cheers
cactus

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cgrenier
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Re: only finding txt, edb, reg, tx? - what's up??

#7 Post by cgrenier »

A bad sector is a sector that can't be read. Nothing will be written for such sectors.
When accessing the clone, the old content of the sector (ie zeros) will be read.

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