Questions tagged [data-recovery]

This tag is for questions about techniques for recovering lost data — e.g., from deleted files and/or damaged or corrupted digital media. Please review the tag wiki before posting a question. Do not explicitly ask for tools or other products; such questions are off-topic on Super User.

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56 votes
9 answers
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How do I recover lost/inaccessible data from my storage device?

What steps can I take to try to recover lost or inaccessible data from any storage device? Answers: This applies to any computer storage device, e.g. internal/external hard drives, USB sticks, flash ...
48 votes
4 answers
344k views

USB flash drive not working or is appearing as an empty disk drive, Disk Management reports "No Media" with 0 bytes size

I have a USB flash drive which is no longer recognized by my computer. Windows Disk Management and DiskPart report No Media with no storage space (0 bytes) on the drive and I cannot partition or ...
bwDraco's user avatar
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82 votes
9 answers
191k views

How much time until an unused hard drive loses its data?

Do you guys know how much time needs to pass until the data stored on a hard drive starts to degrade? To keep the data intact for long periods of time, I heard you need to periodically rewrite it on ...
Alex's user avatar
  • 979
28 votes
6 answers
33k views

Recover data from SD card

I have a 2 GB Kingston microSD card which is about three years old. I put it in a reader today in my Windows Vista computer, wrote a 32 MB file onto it, safely removed it, and then tried to ...
Paul Tarjan's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
9k views

How can I efficiently recover a permanently deleted folder at once?

There was a folder on my hard drive that I want to recover after I deleted it. How can I restore an entire folder from the file system? I have tried some tools to recover deleted files listed in ...
user avatar
4 votes
7 answers
23k views

Recover data from full format on NTFS partition

I have a harddisk with two partitions: one for windows and one for data. I've reinstalled windows on the first partition and formatted the data partition with full format (without /Q option) making ...
masterik's user avatar
  • 141
7 votes
4 answers
2k views

Recover hard disk data after deleting partitions

When I reinstall Windows XP by mistake I deleted all five partitions. I did not format them yet though. How can I recover the partitions? When I attach the hard disk to another PC it just says that ...
user avatar
9 votes
7 answers
10k views

Free NTFS partition recovery after disk was formatted in Mac OS X

I have a 1Tb disk which was partitioned into a ~700gb ntfs disk and a 300gb HFS+ (Mac OS X). I've accidentally allowed Mac OS X to wipe the hard-disk and create a single HFS+ partition over the hard-...
user avatar
9 votes
0 answers
2k views

How do I recover files from an USB flash drive? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: flash drive ejected improperly- lost files I have a USB flash drive that claims it needs to be formatted every time I put it into my computer (Windows). Yesterday the drive ...
Steve Rowe's user avatar
  • 3,879
0 votes
7 answers
16k views

How to recover folders from formatted drive

I had 500GB portable hard drive. it fell from the table and when i joined it was not showing any data and asked me to format it. i did format. Then again it was not functioning properly so i had to ...
Mirage's user avatar
  • 2,903
43 votes
1 answer
28k views

Recover Data from Card that cannnot be read

I am trying to help a friend who is very concerned that she has just lost all of the data on her 32GB SanDisk microSD card. I told her I would post this and see if anyone could offer help. Here are ...
End Anti-Semitic Hate's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
5k views

How do I recover or "undelete" files that I accidentally deleted?

I've accidentally deleted some really important files on my machine, and I'm looking to find out how to recover them. Using the Trash bins "restore" isn't an option, as the files aren't there (mostly ...
James Mertz's user avatar
  • 26.3k
2 votes
3 answers
4k views

MBR recovery - Corrupted MBR after it changed to dynamic & testdisk gives up . No backup sector found

I had a Windows 7 installation on my 1TB SSD laptop with 4 primary partitions. I wanted to install Lubuntu Linux but the process failed with an error which kind of said: cannot write MBR It gave ...
user1874594's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
2k views

DDRescue - Did I do the wrong command which is causing it to take longer then expected

I am running the following command on a 500GB drive: ddrescue --force --direct /dev/sde2 /home/backups/sde2.img sde2_logfile.ddrescue However, the time has been almost 24hrs and all it has done so ...
Jason's user avatar
  • 4,056
1 vote
2 answers
4k views

Corrupted NTFS files (no such file or directory); can I fix them under Linux?

I am trying to copy files to my external hard drive using PartedMagic. My computer won't boot, so we are sending it in to get repaired. I've tried EVERYTHING but can't get it to boot into any desktop ...
NullBite's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
7k views

How to recover overwritten NTFS partition?

The first 7GB of a 500GB NTFS partiton was accidentally overwritten with another file. Is it possible to recover some of the data in the remaining 493 GB of the NTFS volume? The partition table is ...
coolman's user avatar
  • 131
5 votes
2 answers
4k views

Robocopy command to copy updated files and long path names

I'm trying to write a robocopy command to copy from folders SR to DS. Folder DS might have files that already exist in Folder SR, but if Folder DS is updated, don't overwrite it. If folder/files ...
SandoraKiam's user avatar
3 votes
6 answers
2k views

Recover data from hard drive with partitions (but not most data) overwritten

I have a 500GB hard drive I've been keeping around to recover data from that I removed from a failing NAS drive that got sort of... erratic at the end. I finally got rid of the NAS when during a ...
Macha's user avatar
  • 5,312
2 votes
1 answer
775 views

Rebuild massively fragmented files with a partial image and a list of their sectors

In an attempt to recover as much data as possible off of a failing 3TB HDD, I proceeded like this : I made a surface scan with HD Sentinel, which identified two small damaged areas and about 100 bad ...
GabrielB's user avatar
  • 855
2 votes
3 answers
81k views

Hard Disk makes "Click, click, click ..." noise on system start. Won't boot

Computer was humming away happily. It had downloaded a kernel update eariler in the week and been asking for a reboot since. This morning I relented. When the computer powered back up it made a ...
LRE's user avatar
  • 925
51 votes
4 answers
165k views

How do I find out the file type without an extension? [duplicate]

After recovering my HDD, I ended up with a lot of files with no extension. Many of them are .bin files. Is there any way to find out what file format they actually are? Many of them have no ...
echolab's user avatar
  • 735
30 votes
2 answers
23k views

How many passes do you need to wipe/shred your files to make them not undeletable?

If you have a private data on a recent, normal hard drive - how many passes do you need to delete the data to make it unrecoverable? Not in the sense, that a forensic team of 20 experts with a budget ...
user unknown's user avatar
  • 1,852
23 votes
5 answers
16k views

Where do deleted items go on the hard drive?

After reading the quote below on the Casey Anthony trial (CNN) ,I am curious about where deleted files actually go on a hard drive, how they can be seen after being deleted, and to what extent the ...
jerry's user avatar
  • 515
18 votes
4 answers
35k views

Faster recovery from a disk with bad sectors

Recently I tried to dd from an unhealthy HDD to a file. I used dd if=/dev/sdb of=somefile bs=4096 conv=noerror,sync. My problem was that dd wasted a lot of time when it encountered a bad block. In my ...
Notinlist's user avatar
  • 780
7 votes
2 answers
104k views

Successful data recovery but most files are corrupted

I used Recuva and EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard to see if there's any difference in the files they recover. Both software were able to recover files that I want however most of the files where no longer ...
IMB's user avatar
  • 5,503
5 votes
4 answers
16k views

What to do with a corrupted SD card: reformat it or trash it?

I recovered all the files from my corrupted SD card today. What should I do with it now? Reformat and continue using it or throw it away and buy a new one Here's the details on the card and how ...
Bill Paetzke's user avatar
51 votes
3 answers
14k views

Why does my SSD internally encrypt data, even without a password set?

Recently I had an SSD fail and am attempting to do a data recovery. The data recovery company tells us that it is complicated because the build-in drive controller uses encryption. I presume this to ...
Tyler Durden's user avatar
  • 6,121
39 votes
11 answers
257k views

Running chkdsk on a disk partition without a drive letter

I have a hard drive that shows up in Disk Management as having two partitions. One of the partitions says 69.71GB and that's it. The other says 4.82GB and, underneath that, Healthy (OEM Partition). ...
neubert's user avatar
  • 7,102
7 votes
3 answers
63k views

How to connect Western Digital "My passport" using other means?

I have a Western Digital My Passport 500Gb external Harddrive where the USB connection on the drive seems to have worn out. I am trying to retrieve the data for a friend. Here is an image of the ...
Valamas's user avatar
  • 1,545
4 votes
1 answer
10k views

ddrescue stuck on scraping bad blocks... (forwards)

I have a Hitachi 640GB laptop hard drive that has some bad blocks. I don't believe the blocks are physical bad blocks, because the drive doesn't make any clicking noises. The hard drive is formatted ...
Guy Noir's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
8k views

Recovering data from a hard drive with bad sectors

A friend of mine recently gave me a laptop that wasn't booting past the Windows screen. I replaced the hard drive with a new one and put the old hard drive in my comp. to try and recover the data. ...
sb3700's user avatar
  • 133
3 votes
2 answers
16k views

Recover files deleted from Windows 7 with no backup

I accidentally deleted important files, for which I do not have a backup. My thesis files worth four years of sweat is gone and when I tried to go back to a "previous versions" I get the message: ...
Jeon-Ho Aaron Cho's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
3k views

How to reinstall Windows 7 using in-place upgrade when the system is unbootable?

I've experienced some freaky data loss in Windows 7 & tried to recover the files. (More on that in the original question.) The work data is safe but I also decided to copy everything missing back ...
dnbrv's user avatar
  • 895
2 votes
6 answers
72k views

Accessing laptop's hard drive when OS won't boot

What is the best way to access a laptop's hard drive to recover data (assuming there is still intact data) when the OS (Windows XP) won't boot? EDIT: I've tried booting from a disc, but that failed ...
yoozer8's user avatar
  • 444
1 vote
3 answers
1k views

Is there any way to recover deleted files which may have since been overwritten?

I deleted lots of files & folders on my laptop and then I put a new files in the same folders. I need to recover the deleted files. I tried a lot of recovery software and I couldn't recover my old ...
Abdo Hamoud's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
3k views

NTFS Partition Repair - Recommendations

I wasn't able to find any threads that specifically mention repair of NTFS partitions, and recently I have ran into a couple of drives where I've needed to do this. As an example, I have a 60GB IDE ...
JYelton's user avatar
  • 3,237
0 votes
1 answer
417 views

How to find usable files among recovered files?

When you use a data recovery program like Recuva, it can "recover" lots of files which lots of them are just unusable with random data in them but somehow having correct filenames. Is there any way to ...
SkepticalWiz's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
424 views

How to switch ddrescue from `/dev/sdq1` to `/dev/sdq` if I've already backed up data from `/dev/sdq1`?

I started to recover my /dev/sdq1 when I was not familiar with HDD recovery. Well, I was careful enough and recover 85% in about 500 runs. Afterwards, I've found out that I need /dev/sdq (without 1) ...
Vyacheslav Napadovsky's user avatar
19 votes
5 answers
32k views

How do I repair a corrupted Firefox places.sqlite database?

I had some problems with my RAM (bluescreen several times, Windows XP) and now are my Firefox databases damaged. Firefox is working, but my history is gone and it's reporting several inconsistencies ...
Bobby's user avatar
  • 8,974
17 votes
5 answers
66k views

How can I copy files from a scratched CD/DVD?

I have so far tried the following software solutions without success. Windows Explorer Copy (default) TeraCopy Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier Unstoppable Copier stops copying as a whole, it keeps ...
ujjain's user avatar
  • 1,675
14 votes
0 answers
2k views

How long will an unused hard drive store its memory? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: How much time until an unused hard drive loses its data? I have a broken laptop, and it's the motherboards fault that it can't turn its power on. The laptop has been stored ...
winona's user avatar
  • 339
8 votes
3 answers
29k views

How can I get data off of a damaged thumb drive?

A guy I work with just came by to ask me about a damaged thumb drive/USB flash drive. Apparently his son dropped it on a hard surface and it won't power up anymore. They've tried plugging it into ...
Pops's user avatar
  • 8,473
8 votes
1 answer
3k views

How to recover files from a dead SSD?

My Inspiron Dell laptop had two disks, an HDD for files and SSD for the OS (Windows 10). Recently, the HDD was destroyed, so I wanted to try to recover information from the SSD. When I initially broke ...
Nathan's user avatar
  • 183
7 votes
2 answers
9k views

Undelete utility that preserves folder structure [closed]

I did a dumb thing and now need to undelete some files. In fact, I have already recovered the files using Glary Undelete, which has served me well on the other rare occasions where this has been ...
Joel Coehoorn's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
30k views

Is is possible to restore the MFT of a NTFS partition after a format?

I've searched through several questions but didn't quite find anyone treating mine. So, I have a 1TB external hard drive I use for backup purposes with only 1 NTFS partition. Today using DiskPart I ...
Ariadne Sousa's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
12k views

Recover data from a corrupt truecrypt encrypted partiton

If you have a drive that totatly encrypted using Truecrypt and somehow the boot sector / disk header is corrupted and you can no longer mount the truecrypt volume, is it somehow possible to recover ...
Filip Ekberg's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
4k views

When an SSD finally reach its end of life, can you still read its data?

For "end of life" I mean when some of the SSD cells won't erase anymore, and the S.O. starts complaining about write failures. When this finally happens, will I still be able to safely copy all of ...
JohnKiller's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
92k views

Recover Unsaved Notepad Files [duplicate]

My computer rebooted when I wasn't home and I lost several very important notepad files. Is there any way to recover them? Anything?
user353817's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
911 views

Everything on my NTFS partition disappeared

I just rebooted into Windows (I dual boot with Ubuntu), and everything in my D: partition is gone! First question: How do I best preserve the current state of the hard drive to maximize chances of ...
Nicu Stiurca's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
797 views

Data recovery on working hard drive [closed]

So I have a 5 bay hot swap SATA enclosure that's connected to a Silicon Image-based SATA adapter in a computer. It's running XP Pro. There are two 1.5TB hard drives in slots 1 and 2 respectively, set ...
emgee's user avatar
  • 4,597

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