Need help recovering files -_-

[Tay690]

Hello,
I'm having some issues trying to recover some deleted files with Recuva by Piriform

Some background info first:
I've had profile corruption in windows xp 2 times in the past 5 months
Did the suggested Microsoft fix and recreated the profile and copied my files etc.

For some reason my folder with EVERYTHING in it (Son's first baby pics, movies, 4k+ mp3's) didn't finish copying to my new profile and I deleted the profile thinking I had copied the file (duh!)

Now the problem...
When I'm running recuva it is finding the 2 profile paths and between the both profiles I can restore pretty much 98% of all my files

Problem is:
There are 2 profile paths it is picking up
One is as follows:
C:\Documents and settings\Username\Desktop\All\My Music
Files recovered from this profile work perfectly in all media players

The other profile path it is finding seems to be missing some part of the path...yet recuva is still able to pick it up and attempt to recover it

The other profile path is as follows:
C:\?\All\My Music
Files recovered (although they state "Excellent" condition with no overwritten clusters) from this profile path do not work whatsoever

I've compared the 2 files (one working, one not with the exact same file name...just from different location) and the only difference I can see is the summary information and the codec information

Both files are the exact same size and both have .mp3 extensions etc

But when I right click Properties on the file and click the summary tab

The working file shows the summary information correctly

The non working file shows "Summary information is unavailable"

Like I said all files have no overwritten clusters and are the same size

If I can't recover from the older profile with the broken path it will be about 2500+ mp3s and about 100 movies to re-download

(and yes I already got a HD enclosure and a 1.5TB HD to prevent this from happening in the future as well...just need to get my stuff back and it's clear sailing)

Thanks in advance,
Taylor

 

[digitalprospecter]

Hi Taylor,

Because Windows Operating Systems saved data to the first available drive space on your hard drive it is likely that the older profile has much of its data overwritten already. I know from my data recovery experience, you can often recover say picture files and the thumbnails look great, but much of the actual picture has been corrupted by new data that has been written to your drive. The thumbnails look good because they are stored in a header in the file itself and can often be recovered even though the rest of the file is corrupted.

It doesn't look good for your data, but you can try other recovery program as well. Sometimes one program has better results than another.

Good luck!