Using Kato's Restoration.exe FAT32 Undelete File

[Guest]

[this is edited version of post in thread in non-MS Company's newsgroups.
Posted in XP group cuz it's busy ]

Quick background:

Computer is Win Me, FAT32 one HD, no partitions.

yesterday, cleaning out files. Today, two low level folders are gone. It's
possible they were wiped out by crashes, since recently, I have to restart
the computer multiple times. I haven't found a backup system that works
with CDs and overly long names, without hours of manual hunting and editing.
So most recent backups are incomplete, and didn't include one of these low
level folders (grrr)
to avoid overwriting clusters on the "sick" computer, I'm using this other
computer (on the net now) for any purpose but Restoration.
..

Restoration.exe:

1 I'm choosing all of the options. For instance, a first one cannot use "*"
wildcard, so I used just the period "."

However I see more than 50k files, so I'll need some mass ignore or delete
scheme.

2 Kato's Read Me has a 2nd section of instructions. "All clusters scan (FAT
partition)"
Is this section referring to the step in the instructions above, "if you
want to scan vacant clusters, if you couldn't find your target file, please
select yes. (FAT partition)" ?????

3 to avoid concurrent over writing, should I use CTRL+Alt+Del to kill
resident apps, such as win's Restore? Seems I should. But, very few apps can
be killed in ctrl+alt+del
hidserv, rundll, systray. AntiVirus ware. That's about it.


4 While doing tedious manual sifting, can I copy to a networked drive? (I
may discover the answer to this soon, when Restoration.exe finishes its
sweep)
TIA, and T later

 

[Guest]

Restoration's list shows, jpg, zip, txt, tif, url, 'folder' and other
formats, but no doc files. These listed are old files. They haven't been in
their listed folders for a while. These found files seem to be deletions
from Recycle Bin after recent my Zip and Burn activities. I conclude that
the (more recently) lost low-level folders are gone. Crash and chew chew
chew

 

[Jeff Richards]

If you want to recover these files do not use the system at all. Install the
drive as a slave drive in another machine and do the recovery from that
machine. This also solves the problem of where to copy recovered files to.

 

[Guest]

If you want to recover these files do not use the system at all. Install the
drive as a slave drive in another machine and do the recovery from that
machine. This also solves the problem of where to copy recovered files to.

Perfect. I was thinking that I didn't want to shutdown and restart to be
able to put another drive in the "SICK" computer. Putting the "sick" drive
into another computer is much better.
Thanks

 

[Alex Nichol]

Kato's Read Me has a 2nd section of instructions. "All clusters scan (FAT
partition)"
Is this section referring to the step in the instructions above, "if you
want to scan vacant clusters, if you couldn't find your target file, please
select yes. (FAT partition)" ?????

Yes. It is so that even if the FAT entries that the file had have been
put back in the 'free clusters' it will nevertheless scan the clusters
that now appear to be free. In your case and *if* it is a FAT 32
partition you should probably do this

3 to avoid concurrent over writing, should I use CTRL+Alt+Del to kill
resident apps, such as win's Restore? Seems I should. But, very few apps can
be killed in ctrl+alt+del
hidserv, rundll, systray. AntiVirus ware. That's about it.

Only do so for an application that is likely to write to the hard disk -
AV that might write a log for example. The danger with some
applications might be that they have a file open in memory and would
write a 'changed copy' if you killed them

4 While doing tedious manual sifting, can I copy to a networked drive? (I
may discover the answer to this soon, when Restoration.exe finishes its
sweep)

Restoration works most effectively if, when you come to the actual
recovery bit, you do it by copy to another drive. You should do this if
at all possible. On the rare occasions I have used it I have had a
separate HD partition available, but I would expect it to be able to use
a network drive

 

[Alex Nichol]

If you want to recover these files do not use the system at all. Install the
drive as a slave drive in another machine and do the recovery from that
machine. T

A good thought. Also in that case just switch off power - don't try to
shut down, which would get into writing registry updates and the like