cgsecurity.org

Hi,

I'm doing recovery operations to retrieve a flash project file and I followed the instructions from this board to enable the .doc extension, and while it did retrieve .fla files, it didn't retrieve any from more recently than about 2012, which is around the time that I switched from Macromedia Flash 8 to Adobe Flash CS6 (in fact the most recent project it found is the project during which I made the switch). I know it found other files from more recently than that, and those files didn't originate on the drive (it was bought in 2015), so I have to ask if this is a coincidence and I did something incorrectly, or did Adobe change something in the file headers when they acquired Macromedia that makes it different enough that Photorec doesn't recognise it? I should mention that the drive was originally formatted for Mac use (a detail I forgot until the recovery was already in progress), I don't know if that's relevant or not.

I've linked here the report.xml in case that's useful for diagnostics as well: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AM6IxQ ... sp=sharing

And also thanks for making such a useful piece of software! I found it recommended by multiple people and would heartily recommend it to anyone in my situation.

What is the file extension of the files you are looking for?

It's .FLA.

Oh also, for reference, the thread that gave me the advice I menteioned: viewtopic.php?t=1529

As far as I can see you did everything right.

Try writing some examples of this type of unfound fla-files onto an empty USB stick and try to recover them with Photorec. What is the result?

That actually makes some sense - while waiting for your reply just now, I was investigating some of the other files it dug up, and I discovered a lot of SWF files had been recovered as SWC Flash Component files, and they can be easily unzipped and their contents opened normally, and I did encounter some bizarrely large doc files in the retrieval - some over 300mb. It is possible that those are actually the files I'm looking for, and the USB test could corroborate that. I'll do that and post my findings.

It only spat out a couple of .db files, neither of which match the file size of the test file. However, by sheer brute force trial and error, I did encounter at least one of these large, unmarked .doc files that did open to a recognisable flash project file when the file extension was changed. At this point the specific file I'm looking for might still be in the results, it's just... going to take some time to find it.

Combing through the mislabelled doc files, it appears the transition between Flash 8 and CS doesn't have anything to do with whether the recovered file comes out as the proper .fla or mislabelled as something else. It's beyond me what causes this to happen.

Well, my original question was at least resolved. I think the drive I'm trying to get files off has other problems affecting the specific files I'm trying to get, but for the reference of anyone trying to (for some reason) recover Flash project files in the future, .FLAs can be recovered with their file extension changed to .DOC, and .SWFs can be recovered with their file extension changed to .SWC. There are also .DB files which clearly contain some kind of .FLA data but accessing that data is not as straightforward as changing the file extension.

Thanks again for such a useful and powerful tool!