Can I find out partially destroyed video from hard disk?

[pxstein]

When I save a video file on my hard disk then this video file is physically stored in multiple (thousands) of hard disk sectors. For simplicity lets say on sectors #200000 ..... #210000

Now lets assume I delete this file
a) by just deleting the FAT/NTFS file table entry
and
b) sectors #200000 ... #205000 are overwritten
by other files or by one of the true delete tools.

So at that moment still 50000 sectors with the original video file source exists.

Can users still find out the content of this video file?
Ok, obviously the first half (.e.g the first 20 minutes) are really destroyed. But what about the second 20 minutes of the video file:

Can they by recreated (without having acces to the first part)?

Does it matter what kind of video format it was:

*.avi
*.mp4
*.mkv

[Krispy Kritter]

File type will matter. Some types store file information differently. For example, VLC can play some file types if the file is damaged. But the same type of damage to other file types will prevent the file from playing at all. At least based on my experience.

And I'm assuming you are referring to the average user finding the partial file, not a data recovery specialist. With the right tools, any partial files can be accessed. But those tools are not available to consumers.

[Cornucopia]

Not counting the extreme rarity of data scrubbing to recover the underlying, overwritten data, your various undelete/recovery software will do one or more of the following:

1. Hang, or say nothing is recoverable
2. Recover ONLY the un-rewritten data as a raw partial data file
3. Recover the whole file, which now includes both the original end and the re-written, new/wrong data. This would normally be seen as a "corrupt" file.
4. Same as #3 but with ZEROs in place of the re-written.

Assuming you got something from 2, 3, or 4, you can really only fully recover the video if you know or can rightly guess the parameters of the original video file (barring duration & bitrate). Then you will need to cut & paste that remaining wanted section and drop it into a pristine, known good "placeholder" file of the same format & parameters (using e.g. hex editor). You will have to play with the "window" of this cut as you will want it to start at the same "beginning-of-frame" as a normal stream would. LOTS of manual trial & error. Good luck, you will need it.

Scott