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After my system crash some days back I tried to recover files. As a result of recovery I have lots and lots of corrupt files which are of no use to me. Is their any way to automatically detect and delete such files?

The size of whole garbage dump exceeds 40 GB. I want keep only the useful files(less than 1%) and delete the corrupt ones.

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I would first ask, why did the system crash? If it was a hardware issue, I would make sure my files were backed up. Second, you say that files are corrupt. How did you determine they are bad? Have you run chkdsk /f? Lastly, what kid of files? All kinds, or specific types? – KCotreau Jun 29 '11 at 16:39
Even if there is such a program, you are too late. Any such program would take a fingerprint of the file before, when known good, and compare it to that fingerprint. That is similar to what sfc /scannow does for Windows files. – KCotreau Jun 29 '11 at 16:41
1) Hard-disk got crashed 2) they were not backed up 3) yes they are bad, I am not able to open many of them.(some are opening properly) 4)The system is no more with me, I have only backup data 5)all kinds, many have file extensions which I even dont know. And the size of this whole garbage is some 40 GB – bubble Jun 29 '11 at 16:42
Unfortunately, I really think you are going to be out of luck. If you had the original disk, chkdsk /f might have helped. – KCotreau Jun 29 '11 at 16:46
Atleast is it possible for particular type of files? Such as I have many image files, can any software detect that which image files are good(openable) and which are bad. similarly for doc files,pdfs,rar – bubble Jun 29 '11 at 16:51
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PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from hard disks, CD-ROMs, and lost pictures (thus the Photo Recovery name) from digital camera memory. PhotoRec ignores the file system and goes after the underlying data, so it will still work even if your media's file system has been severely damaged or reformatted.

PhotoRec is free - this open source multi-platform application is distributed under GNU General Public License. PhotoRec is a companion program to TestDisk, an app for recovering lost partitions on a wide variety of file systems and making non-bootable disks bootable again. You can download them from this link.

For more safety, PhotoRec uses read-only access to handle the drive or memory card you are about to recover lost data from. Important: As soon as a pic or file is accidentally deleted, or you discover any missing, do NOT save any more pics or files to that memory device or hard disk drive; otherwise you may overwrite your lost data. This means that while using PhotoRec, you must not choose to write the recovered files to the same partition they were stored on.

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Here the problem is not recovery but sorting. – bubble Jun 29 '11 at 17:20
@bubble: Read the whole page. – Hello71 Jun 29 '11 at 17:23
please specify which part you are insisting.. cant find anything usefull as such – bubble Jun 29 '11 at 17:32
@bubble: "I want keep only the useful files" - seems a lot like recovery to me. – Hello71 Jun 29 '11 at 22:09
I have mentioned already "As a result of recovery I have lots and lots of corrupt files". That essentially means that I have recovered the files. – bubble Jun 30 '11 at 7:39
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