Can i get back damaged files?

[sakajo]

I ran a data recovery scan of a hard drive that i deleted files from. When i recovered the data, i found that there were many .mov and .mp4 files that were damaged. I say damaged and not corrupted because I can open them, but then all of a sudden they freeze at around a 1 minute or so. Now i want to add that these files I am 100% sure that they were the last files I deleted from that hard drive and Im 100% sure I didnt store any additional files on that hard drive after deleting.

So my question is, is there any way I can repair these files? I tried VLC but it froze at the exact point the video freezes when I play it.
Second question, if I run the recovery from another software, is there a chance I can recover them undamaged?

[lcoughey]

What is the problem with the original drive?

[sakajo]

Theres absolutely nothing wrong with it. It works just fine. Its just that I deleted a bunch of files to make space for new ones, then didnt need that space. So I tried to recover and got some of the files back, but some of the .mov and .p4 (probably others too) just freeze at around the one minute mark.

When looking at the video file on a video editing software, it just shows a grey screen on the damaged part.

[lcoughey]

Sorry for the questions, but I need to get a better feel for what we are dealing with. Can you confirm that nothing has been written back to the source drive since the files were deleted? You removed the drive from the system and are using software installed on another system to scan the drive connected as a secondary device (USB or SATA) and then saved all the recovered files to another drive?

A very bad and common mistake we see with DIY recovery attempts is that the user installs some cheap data recovery program that they find on the internet, sometimes more than one program, on the same drive from which they are trying to recover the files. Just by installing the program, they overwrite some of the files. They then scan the drive with these programs, meanwhile allowing both the programs and windows to continually write to their cache to the drive, overwriting even more data. Then the final blow is when they write the files they found to the same drive, overwriting the files as they recover them, killing any chance for recovery by anyone, even a professional data recovery lab. Hopefully, this is not the case for your files.

[sakajo]

Hey, no please ask as much as you want, I appreciate all your help.

Yes confirmed nothing was written on the disk after the deletion. It is an external hard disk. I deleted files to make space then didnt need that space so performed the recovery. I did the recovery actually maybe 5-6 months after the deletion. I made sure to not recover the files on the same drive of course. As of now, that drive is exactly as it was at the moment of deleting the files. No files were added or removed from that specific disk.

The files were created and deleted through a mac, and then recovered on a PC (as i couldnt find any good, reasonably priced softwares for mac)

What I find odd is the relative accuracy in the damage. They all freeze at around the 1min to 1:30 mark. Of course there are some exceptions but most of them seem to be around that mark. What else could have affected the files?

To be honest, i did go through a bunch of different softwares until i reached the one that i found was good enough (EaseUS in Windows). Didnt know that might affect the quality f the recovery. Is there anything I can do to reverse this effect? Do you know anything I can get for free on Mac?

One more thing, Im not entirely sure about this, but I think i remember some of the files having a .mov version and a .mp4 version, the .mov version was damaged, while the .mp4 version wasnt, so maybe theres still hope. Appreciate your time!

[lcoughey]

Okay...it is probably more a case of the recovery software not being able to work around the file fragmentation of the larger files. If the drive was HFS+ formatted on a Mac, the best program for the recovery is Data Rescue in Mac OS. You may also want to try R-Studio, either in Windows or Mac OS...the program is pretty much the same. Although I haven't played with it myself, I've heard good things about CnW for carving out fragmented videos.

[sakajo]

Cant thank you enough, really! Il try it out and give you an update if youre intersted

[lcoughey]

Please do follow-up. It is not only helpful for us to know what worked and didn't work, but the information is useful for others who may stumble upon this thread with the same questions.

[Joep]

Just a heads up, remove if it's considered spam: This is a new tool (JPEG Recovery LAB) that also supports recovery of fragmented JPG, NEF, CR2 and MP4 files. Note that although it may work on hard disks, it was designed with smaller media like memory cards in mind.

https://www.disktuna.com/jpeg-recovery- ... -recovery/

It needs a beefy PC. 8 GB RAM minimum, 2 GB per CPU core. It's also sloooow, but that's the nature of the beast.

Joep

[lcoughey]

Just a heads up, remove if it's considered spam: This is a new tool (JPEG Recovery LAB) that also supports recovery of fragmented JPG, NEF, CR2 and MP4 files. Note that although it may work on hard disks, it was designed with smaller media like memory cards in mind.

https://www.disktuna.com/jpeg-recovery- ... -recovery/

It needs a beefy PC. 8 GB RAM minimum, 2 GB per CPU core. It's also sloooow, but that's the nature of the beast.

Joep

Don't worry, we consider everything you post as SPAM.