Hi,

First, let me say thanks for making iRecover. It succeeded (for the most part) where other more expensive apps failed. CHK-Mate isn't working, though; more on that later.

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Background:
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My secondary drive (FAT32) on a Win 2k machine sounded like it was slowly dying; sometimes during a read/write operation, I could see/hear that the system was hanging momentarily (a few seconds) because the drive was, for lack of a better phrase, getting hung up (it sounded like the spindle was getting stuck or something, though I'm not sure of that).

So, I copied everything from that drive to the secondary drive in my Win XP machine and everything copied over fine. But when I put the new (XP) drive into the Win 2k machine, the data was corrupted -- it showed up in Win Explorer, but as junk. Not sure what caused the corruption; I could swear I had formatted the XP drive as FAT32, but maybe not. So, I formatted the new drive in the Win 2k machine, this time for sure FAT32, and I put the old (dying) Win 2k drive in the XP machine. Here's where the real trouble started.

I booted up the XP machine and it immediately went to an unfamiliar DOS-type interface (I just recently got XP) that, I assume, was chkdsk.exe running. All I saw were lines scrolling by saying it was checking for lost or bad clusters. I just let the machine run, and about 10-15 minutes later, it booted up. I looked at the data on the old drive, and it showed up fine in Win Explorer. I copied some of the data form that drive to the XP C: drive. Then I put the old drive back into the Win 2k machine and the new drive back into the XP machine.

When I viewed the contents of the old drive in the Win 2k machine, all that showed was the dreaded FOUND.000 directory with almost 3,000 .chk files -- the amount of disk space was the same (or approximately) as it had been. After trying a bunch of other stuff, I found your guy's site and tried using CHK-Mate.

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Problem:
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Unfortunately, CHK-Mate just hangs when I try to run it on any of those files, but I can open up the files in a hex or text editor. (That doesn't really help because I'm trying to retrieve .wav files.) FTR, CHK-Mate worked on my primary drive with some other .chk files, but I tried copying some of the .chk files from the secondary drive to the primary and running CHK-Mate on them, but CHK-Mate still hung.

I then tried iRecover, and it was able to find all the original files *except* those that were in the root. It did find the root directory, but all it shows is the FOUND.000 directory and the .chk files -- doesn't show any of the "pre-conversion" files. So, it appears that anything that was in a subdirectory was found, but no files within the root directory were found.

Do you know of any way to get to the old root files which, I assume, are there in some form?

Thanks,
Jay

P.S. Sorry for the lengthy explanation. Just wanted to make sure the situation is clear.

Product you are using: iRecover and CHK-Mate

Operating system / Service Pack: Win 2k sp4, Win XP sp2

Size of subject harddisk: 40 GB

Hi,

But do I understand correctly that the data can be viewed and copied in XP, and that same data from that same drive can not be viewed/copied using W2K? If so, why not just salvage the data using the XP install?

"Unfortunately, CHK-Mate just hangs when I try to run it on any of those files"

CHK-Mate is resource hungry and may appear to hang (being unresponsive) while it is still working. On the other hand, CHK-Mate does not work very well with very large files. It was designed with a few .chk files in mind often occupying only a few clusters. For large files, CHK-Mate would need to be rewritten. If you want we can refund you the money for CHK-Mate.

"I then tried iRecover, and it was able to find all the original files *except* those that were in the root. It did find the root directory, but all it shows is the FOUND.000 directory and the .chk files"

But those files iRecover didn't find were originally in the root?

"Unfortunately, CHK-Mate just hangs when I try to run it on any of those files, but I can open up the files in a hex or text editor. (That doesn't really help because I'm trying to retrieve .wav files.)"

Well, basically what CHK-Mate does, is open the file and look at the file's header. With a hex editor you could do the same. Just open a few valid WAV files and look at the first few bytes, look for bytes they have in common.

With your hex editor try to spot the WAV files (RIFF¤>). Another method would be to just rename all .chk files to .WAV files and try to play them.

Also, a tool like Davory from www.winhex.com will use file headers like CHK-Mate, but rather than opening already existing files, it will scan the disk at the sector level for those headers. This way it can recover files even when the directory/index entry for the file was lost, damaged or overwritten.

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Kind regards,
Joep

"But do I understand correctly that the data can be viewed and copied in XP, and that same data from that same drive can not be viewed/copied using W2K? If so, why not just salvage the data using the XP install?"

I'm afraid to put the drive in the XP machine considering what happened last time. In any case, it doesn't seem that the original files would somehow reappear considering what's showing up in Explorer now. But if nothing else works, I'll try that.

"But those files iRecover didn't find were originally in the root?"

Yes. E.g., I had stuff like "F:file.wav". Now, all I have is "F:FOUND.000*.chk" (almost 3,000 files). Do you know if iRecover may still be of some help in finding those files that were in the root?

"Also, a tool like Davory from www.winhex.com will use file headers like CHK-Mate, but rather than opening already existing files, it will scan the disk at the sector level for those headers. This way it can recover files even when the directory/index entry for the file was lost, damaged or overwritten."

Thanks for the referral. I'll check it out if you have no further suggestions on how iRecover may help.

Thanks,
Jay

Product you are using: iRecover

Operating system / Service Pack: Win 2k sp4, Win XP sp2

Size of subject harddisk: 40 GB

Hello Joep,

You had asked:
"But those files iRecover didn't find were originally in the root?"

to which I answered:
"Yes. E.g., I had stuff like "F:file.wav". Now, all I have is "F:FOUND.000*.chk" (almost 3,000 files). Do you know if iRecover may still be of some help in finding those files that were in the root?"

Do you have any advice on this matter? Can iRecover be of help in locating the files that were in the root? Or should I look to another solution?

Thanks,
Jay

Product you are using: iRecover

Hello,

If you have examined the disk with iRecover and the files are not shown (the originals) then iRecover will not help you.

Did you try searching for the files, under options? Change the include filter to *.wav and browse throught the folder list. You'll be able to spot folders that contain .wav files that way.

If they're not there I'd go for Davory instead, there are alternatives that also scan for file signatures; O & O DiskRecovery being one (http://www.oo-software.com/en/index.html).

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Joep

Thanks very much, Joep. iRecover is a great tool.

Jay

Product you are using: iRecover