| Author | Message | ||
     Scott Hurst |
Hey all: In the process of an upgrade I copied all of my data files to a newly formatted (FAT32) loaner drive, installed a new OS on my primary drive and then copied the data back to my drive. The upgrade seemed to go well enough so I returned the drive to the owner who quick formatted it as NTFS. Sure enough my drive crashed and now I've lost everything on it so I'm looking to the backup drive to recover what I can. The drive was newly formatted so I've lucked out since the data is now layed out on contiguous sectors and I don't need the FAT to chain the file fragments together. All I need is the start and the end location. I'm stuck with the Quicken file though since the file format is proprietary. By examining a new QDF file I've determined that the header for the files starts with AC 9E BD 8F (hex) and have found some possible matches. My problem is that I have no way of determining what the trailing byte pattern in the data file is. If the length of the file is determined at the start of the file then I'd need to know where the length field is positioned. If there is some other way to indicate where the end is then I'd need to know that. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks... Scott | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann (Admin) |
I do not know about Quicken, but usually it doesn't do any bad if data files are recovered "too big", since the native application will know where to stop reading the file. So you could use Tools | Disk Tools | File Retrieval with a generous fixed file size instead of a footer. My other recommendation is: format the drive again with FAT32 (of course: non-destructive quick format only), or preferably a clone of that disk. Then open the drive as a logical drive with the disk editor, and use the new data recovery mechanism described here to recreate either entire directories or specific .qdf files only on another drive. It is likely that the directory entries in subdirectories are still intact, so WinHex will know the start cluster and the size of all files. Good luck! | ||
| Anonymous |
Hi, the data on one of the Quicken backup floppies cannot be restored by the program as it goes into a continuous loop. I am trying out your WinHex program to recover this information. As suggested in your support forum, I copied the Quicken qdf file to a temporary folder created in my hard drive. After opening that logical drive, I used the Tools | Disk Tools | List Directory Clusters command and identified the qdf file and WinHex listed all the clusters. Through another program, I had determined that the problem was towards the end of the Quicken file in six bad clusters. My question is how to use your file recovery mechanism as the Access button menu does not contain the recovery command. Is there a prior step that requires WinHex to analyze the sectors before proceeding with Access? If so, how do I limit the analysis to just the file in question - otherwise, WinHex tells me that some 967 minutes are needed to analyze the sectors. | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann (Admin) |
I'm afraid you misunderstood something. - The data recovery/file recovery mechanisms built into WinHex are intended to recover files that were lost e.g. because of file system errors, erroneous deletion or formatting. They cannot repair files in a proprietary format that somehow got corrupt or that are partially unreadable because of physically damaged clusters. - The data analysis feature is not needed in your scenario or as a first step in automatically recovering a file with WinHex. - The Access button menu contains a Recover command only if the blinking cursor is over the directory entry (file or subdirectory) to be recovered on a FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 drive. However, you won't need it, as it seems you could successfully copy the file off the floppy to your hard drive. |