Access or extract usefull media from corrupt .wmv and.avi files?

[chromx]

Operating System: Windows 10 Home (10.0, Build 15063)
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7, 160gb, access via external USB

Hello Guys,

in 2011 i made some video recordings on my computer, which i saved some in AVI and some in WMV format. Unfortunately i formatted the harddrive a few years after, and also i stored some other data, like 20 gb out of 160 on it after the formatting, and now im trying to get any usefull images or even the whole videos back.

when searching for lost data with recovery programs, recently i used recuva, i find the 3 files from my old NTFS partition, including size information (2x wmv -> 35mb, 1300mb, avi -> 2600 mb) and the date they were created, and it even says the data has not been overwritten and is in excellent status to recover, so i successfully recovered the files, but i cant open them with any player vlc included. I also tried to convert the files to other formats with vlc and other programs but the result is a 0byte file that cant be played either.

So i tried to analyse the file format with TrID and found out that there is no match with any known file extension.

I am able to open the files with Hex Editor, and the Avi file definetly missing the normal RIFF header, so it doesnt appears to be an avi at all.

So now my question, is there any way to extract informations out of those files, i mean the files are huge and theres loads of data written in it, even tho the hex entrys doesnt make sense to me.

i was thinking of recompiling it somehow, or if there is a programm that conversts hex code sections in any usefull other informations, like jpg or other formats..

So yea and repairing the files with a vast amount of tools for either wmv or avi files failed aswell, since they dont recognize the files as media files at all.

Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks in advance =)

[lcoughey]

Recuva is a very cheap data recovery program and you get what you pay for. The odds are, it didn't properly recover the files or the files contain overwritten sectors. So, rather than waste your time trying to fix an unfixable file, I suggest you try other various data recovery programs and make sure that absolutely nothing is written back to the drive from which you are trying to recover...or it will be game over.

[Joep]

when searching for lost data with recovery programs, recently i used recuva, i find the 3 files from my old NTFS partition, including size information (2x wmv -> 35mb, 1300mb, avi -> 2600 mb) and the date they were created, and it even says the data has not been overwritten and is in excellent status to recover, so i successfully recovered the files, but i cant open them with any player vlc included

No program can actually guarantee the condition of files like that, it should be regarded an estimation. This estimation is purely based on examination of the file system bitmap where used vs unused clusters can be looked up. Windows has a function for that which is part of the defrag API.

IF clusters allocated to deleted/lost file are unused according to bitmap, the program assumes the file has not yet been overwritten => condition excellent. Some clusters in use by other file, condition fair, even more overwritten, poor, etc.. Some tools give percentage of file that has not yet been overwritten. It is however possible, considering the file was deleted/lost years ago that several files have been using those or some of the clusters and have again been deleted after that.

One further factor a tool can use to determine condition of a file is: If file entry (whatever file system: director entry for FAT, MFT entry for NTFS, whatever) says the file is for example JPG, the tool can compare this with known header for JPG (FF D8), and if match then indeed it looks better than no matching header. Same for AVI, look for signature match (52 49 46 46), IF present then indeed it looks better then signature not present.

Still, no guarantee as it tells us nothing about the rest of the file.