help me please im desperate

[kalinh]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been trying to rescue a critical video file for hours and have hit a complete dead end. I really need some help.

The File: A 2.5 GB deleted .mov video file (originally shot on a Canon camera).

The Deletion Details: I accidentally deleted both my Day 1 (d1) and Day 2 (d2) video files. The d1 file went straight to the Recycle Bin and I was able to get it back perfectly. However, the d2 folder/file (the 2.5 GB one) was completely nowhere to be found in the trash bin, which forced me to use recovery software.

The Environment: I am working on a laptop with an SSD internal drive, and the missing files were stored on an external USB drive.

The USB Drive State: The USB drive was working fine initially, but as soon as I used a tool to try and recover the video, the drive started acting up and completely turned into a gibberish format. It now shows random text, weird characters, and strange symbols instead of my folders. The actual D2 folder is completely inaccessible.

The Problem: I tried using Recuva, but it only pulled a file that plays a 2-second black screen in VLC before cutting out.

What I Tried: I ran that broken 2-second file through a repair tool called Untrunc using the working d1 reference video, but the fixed file is still just 2 seconds of black screen. I also tried running Windows File Recovery to pull the data, but it didn't solve the problem. The full 2.5 GB of data seems completely fragmented or locked behind the corrupted USB file system.

I don't have a budget for expensive recovery services, so I am trying to figure out if there is a free tool or a manual way to bypass the gibberish error, safely read the drive, and actually get my D2 folder and video back.

Any guidance would mean the world to me. Thank you so much.

[The_Doman]

The USB Drive State: The USB drive was working fine initially, but as soon as I used a tool to try and recover the video, the drive started acting up and completely turned into a gibberish format. It now shows random text, weird characters, and strange symbols instead of my folders. The actual D2 folder is completely inaccessible.

What tool exactly did you use and what/did it write directly to the USB drive?
Recovery attempts should never be done directly to the device to be recovered.

If you know the disk file system on the drive that could possible help.
NTFS has much more/better recovery chances than (ex)Fat.
Management of > 4TB HDDs (exFAT,NTFS and GPT)

Hard to guess what has happened and what exactly to do.
I have had disks with damaged file systems which could be read/fixed/recovered fine with a partition tool.

I know Recuva, but it is very limited in its recovery options.

You could try this tool which is popular with data recovery services and gives workable options for free use:
DMDE — Disk Editor & Data Recovery Software

But with all recovery tools, you have to know exactly what you are doing and it can take a long time when you need to scan a whole disk to find possible data to recover.

Data recover for Reformatted drive

For these kind of situations i always use the Getdataback recovery software and do a full/deep scan of the drive to find the lost data.
With a NTFS filesystem the change of recovering files/folders is pretty high.
Of course data in the overwritten part of the disk is forever lost/unrecoverable.
Not freeware but you can preview/open files to see if the recovery is possible/successful.

[Attachment 79609 - Click to enlarge]

[ProWo]

The Environment: I am working on a laptop with an SSD internal drive, and the missing files were stored on an external USB drive.

The USB Drive State: The USB drive was working fine initially, but as soon as I used a tool to try and recover the video, the drive started acting up and completely turned into a gibberish format. It now shows random text, weird characters, and strange symbols instead of my folders. The actual D2 folder is completely inaccessible.

1) DO NOT WRITE TO THE USB DRIVE.
2) Clone the whole USB Drive to another one.
3) Any recovery action should be done on the clone only.

[The_Doman]

1) DO NOT WRITE TO THE USB DRIVE.
2) Clone the whole USB Drive to another one.
3) Any recovery action should be done on the clone only.

Yes, the basic principles with serious data recovery of course.
But in practice many people not have or can/want to buy enough spare storage space to make a backup image.
But as long the drive has no mechanical/reading defects and you only READ from the drive doing recovery attempts it should be fine.
Often i do this myself with simple recovery/undelete actions from user errors.

And one extra thing for preventing accidentally deleting files.
Always turn on confirmation for deletion in Windows!!
Google: Windows confirm before delete
I never understood the logic why it is turned off at default now in Windows.
It should be on ALWAYS at default!

[VWestlife]

Always turn on confirmation for deletion in Windows!!

Even that won't always save you. I once opened a text file in a text editor program, made some changes to it, but then decided to not save the changes and revert to the original contents. So when I exited the program, it asked me if I wanted to save the changes, so I said no, and it DELETED the file! Not moved to the Recycle Bin, just gone entirely!! I had to use a file recovery utility to get it back.

My only explanation for that is I had opened it via a networked drive, and the program must've been badly written and gotten confused by that. (No local copy = it thought I was creating a new file = default action when not saving changes was to delete the "temporary" file?)

[davexnet]

Try doing a deep scan and take note of the "state" when you get the results.
IN general, only those that say "excellent" and are green at the filename recover successfully.

[GAhere]

Recuva is from "CC Cleaner", CC cleaner is known for making more of a mess of your PC than if you had left it alone so I am not sure Recuva will be any better...

Sadly if file names are gibberish, most likely corruption damage has been done to the USB drive partition table or drive is failing

You didn't state if the external drive is a USB thumb or flash drive or if it is an external HD case with spinning or SSD drive inside (IE like a WD "My book")..

As for the drive partition table, that sometimes can be recovered via specialized Windows tools from MS.

There are some Windows enthusiasts websites that have a good handle on using the MS tools for corrupted partition tables..

For future reference, large files are not sent to the Recycle bin but are directly deleted so one must be careful to make sure you really want to delete the file. USB flash drives do not have a Recycle bin capability so when you delete anything from a flash drive , it is gone.

However, the files are not really deleted, rather they are renamed, the first letter of the file name is removed and a "special character" is added to the file name where the first letter was. That special character tells the OS to HIDE the file name from view..

The deleted file can often be recovered via third party recover tools, however, for best success of recovering accidentally deleted files you MUST not write any more data to the drive. Writing data to the drive can overwrite your deleted file partially or in full corrupting that file.

I have had very good success recovering deleted files with using a free recovery program called Undelete 360

You can find that program here..

https://undelete360.com/

Older versions were free of installing additional unwanted junk, I will not make a guarantee that it has remained that way so watch the install screens and opt out of any additional junk other than the main program..

Undelete 360 will also automatically prompt you to use a different drive from the one you are attempting to recover the files from, always choose a different drive for Undelete 360 to place the files it recovers. Your success rate will be much better than if you choose to recover to the drive with the deleted files.

[davexnet]

I've got the installer for Recuvu 1.53 when it was still Piriform Software.
I'll upload it if anybody's interested

[ctsdh0]

Years ago i bought StrongRecovery - you can scan for deleted/lost files, and if you're lucky you can recover them for free ( 50 files/5gb ). It took nearly 12 hours to scna my 2tb external usb3 mechanical drive, but i managed to recover all music projects and photos/movies. Worth trying... https://www.strongrecovery.com/