Recovering Corrupted Files in VISTA Home Prem SP1

[John Randle]

For some unknown reason the Pictures folder has been corrupted and now shows
0 files. Yet a search for "*.jpg" files on the C: drive shows the files as
still existing under C:\Users\Name\Pictures and its sub folders (none of the
subfolders are visible in windows explorer due to the corruption of the
Pictures folder). Trying to directly open any of these files results in a
failure .. probably due to part of the path (i.e. the Pictures folder) being
damaged/corrupted. Running chkdsk in user (read only) mode shows several
corrupted files. Running chkdsk /R as administrator results in a lot of disk
accesses upon restart (when the chkdsk /R utility actually runs) but the
problem still exists. Trying to drag an individual file from the search
results to another location fails. Any suggestions on how to recreate the
path to these files .. or a means of exporting them from the hard disk to
another media would be greatly appreciated. While I do not particularly want
to remove the hard disk and use it as an external drive on another system, I
have considered that approach if nothing else is available.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

For some unknown reason the Pictures folder has been corrupted and now
shows
0 files. Yet a search for "*.jpg" files on the C: drive shows the files as
still existing under C:\Users\Name\Pictures and its sub folders (none of
the
subfolders are visible in windows explorer due to the corruption of the
Pictures folder). Trying to directly open any of these files results in a
failure .. probably due to part of the path (i.e. the Pictures folder)
being
damaged/corrupted. Running chkdsk in user (read only) mode shows several
corrupted files. Running chkdsk /R as administrator results in a lot of
disk
accesses upon restart (when the chkdsk /R utility actually runs) but the
problem still exists. Trying to drag an individual file from the search
results to another location fails. Any suggestions on how to recreate the
path to these files .. or a means of exporting them from the hard disk to
another media would be greatly appreciated. While I do not particularly
want
to remove the hard disk and use it as an external drive on another system,
I
have considered that approach if nothing else is available.

I'd consider 3rd party data recovery software. I have not found chkdsk to
be a extremely reliable tool for this - in too many cases, I've seen it
leave damaged and unusable files instead of recovered files.

Googling data recovery software will get you lots of hits, and many of the
results will have a demo mode so you can get an idea of what can be
recovered.

And yes, removing the disk and attaching it to another system can help with
recovery. USB2 drive cases make this quick, easy and inexpensive. And
no, it's really never a good idea to try to recover to the same drive.

HTH
-pk

 

[John Randle]

Thank you Patrick .. your response possibly explains why I do not see any
improvement when running chkdsk /R. I will continue to pursue some of the
3rd party data recovery software. I find it interesting that the "search"
function in VISTA will return the previously correct path to the files ..
even though the path is now corrupted. Any further insights as to why that
is happening would be appreciated.