I accidentally shift-deleted some 800 files and 60 folders from an external hard drive this morning
before i could cancel the delete folder operation and am looking for ways to recover the files.

I downloaded, but have not installed:

Recoverit (A pay service for sure)
DRW Free
JIHO Free

I really do not want to pay for a utility to do this.|

they are not backed up.
there are no previous versions.

Any suggestions?

jackpatton@astraweb.com wrote:
> I accidentally shift-deleted some 800 files and 60 folders from an external hard drive this morning
> before i could cancel the delete folder operation and am looking for ways to recover the files.
>
> I downloaded, but have not installed:
>
> Recoverit (A pay service for sure)
> DRW Free
> JIHO Free
>
> I really do not want to pay for a utility to do this.|
>
> they are not backed up.
> there are no previous versions.
>
> Any suggestions?

This is an undelete program, and not a scavenger for
"busted" file systems. This should do the job.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuva

Green dots mean the files it found, are intact.
Red dots are bad news (cluster damage).

Select the free version.

https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

You'll be installing that on C: and the missing files
are on a completely separate partition, so doing the
install should be safe.

In principle, a file can be recovered, simply by flipping
a single byte in the $MFT entry.

But if the program asks you to, save any recovered
files or folders on something other than the "damaged"
partition. You could make a partition on C: and
put the goods there.

Since the external drive is unlikely to have received
write operations since this happened, you should
have mostly green dots for the candidate files in
the recovery list.

Since Piriform was bought by AVAST/AVG, if they wanted to
trick you into downloading an AV at the same time, they can.
Be careful what you click, and read each screen carefully.

*******

Photorec is an entirely different concept, and is to be
used when the file system is no longer readable perhaps.
If Recuva gave you all red dots for the files, then I would
not expect PhotoRec to magically bolt all the fragments
back together. Life simply doesn't work that way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoRec

PhotoRec/TestDisk is typical FOSS, and doesn't have
as strong of a commercial bend. It won't put an AV
on your disk at least :-)

Paul

On 2021-09-09 4:10 p.m., jackpatton@astraweb.com wrote:
> I accidentally shift-deleted some 800 files and 60 folders from an external hard drive this morning
> before i could cancel the delete folder operation and am looking for ways to recover the files.
>
> I downloaded, but have not installed:
>
> Recoverit (A pay service for sure)
> DRW Free
> JIHO Free
>
> I really do not want to pay for a utility to do this.|
>
> they are not backed up.
> there are no previous versions.
>
> Any suggestions?
>

Lot of people are getting good results from 'Recuva'
at

https://recuva.en.softonic.com/download

worth a shot and it is free.

Rene

jackpatton@astraweb.com wrote:
> I accidentally shift-deleted some 800 files and 60 folders from an external hard drive this morning
> before i could cancel the delete folder operation and am looking for ways to recover the files.
>
> I downloaded, but have not installed:
>
> Recoverit (A pay service for sure)
> DRW Free
> JIHO Free
>
> I really do not want to pay for a utility to do this.|
>
> they are not backed up.
> there are no previous versions.
>
> Any suggestions?

https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva
Do not install on the external drive.

On Thu, 9 Sep 2021 19:48:00 -0500, Paul in Houston TX
<Paul@Houston.Texas> wrote:

>jackpatton@astraweb.com wrote:
>> I accidentally shift-deleted some 800 files and 60 folders from an external hard drive this morning
>> before i could cancel the delete folder operation and am looking for ways to recover the files.
>>
>> I downloaded, but have not installed:
>>
>> Recoverit (A pay service for sure)
>> DRW Free
>> JIHO Free
>>
>> I really do not want to pay for a utility to do this.|
>>
>> they are not backed up.
>> there are no previous versions.
>>
>> Any suggestions?
>
>https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva
>Do not install on the external drive.

Get another external drive for backing up the first one. I have
four external drives.

On Thu, 9 Sep 2021 19:48:00 -0500, Paul in Houston TX <Paul@Houston.Texas> wrote:

>jackpatton@astraweb.com wrote:
>> I accidentally shift-deleted some 800 files and 60 folders from an external hard drive this morning
>> before i could cancel the delete folder operation and am looking for ways to recover the files.
>>
>> I downloaded, but have not installed:
>>
>> Recoverit (A pay service for sure)
>> DRW Free
>> JIHO Free
>>
>> I really do not want to pay for a utility to do this.|
>>
>> they are not backed up.
>> there are no previous versions.
>>
>> Any suggestions?
>
>https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva
>Do not install on the external drive.
Thanks.....

jackpatton@astraweb.com wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Sep 2021 19:48:00 -0500, Paul in Houston TX <Paul@Houston.Texas> wrote:
>
>> jackpatton@astraweb.com wrote:
>>> I accidentally shift-deleted some 800 files and 60 folders from an external hard drive this morning
>>> before i could cancel the delete folder operation and am looking for ways to recover the files.
>>>
>>> I downloaded, but have not installed:
>>>
>>> Recoverit (A pay service for sure)
>>> DRW Free
>>> JIHO Free
>>>
>>> I really do not want to pay for a utility to do this.|
>>>
>>> they are not backed up.
>>> there are no previous versions.
>>>
>>> Any suggestions?
>>
>> https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva
>> Do not install on the external drive.
> Thanks.....

:)
I just more or less seconded Paul NoSpam.
His answer is more complete.

Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

> jackpatton@astraweb.com wrote:
>
>> I accidentally shift-deleted some 800 files and 60 folders from an external hard drive this morning
>> before i could cancel the delete folder operation and am looking for ways to recover the files.
>>
>> I downloaded, but have not installed:
>>
>> Recoverit (A pay service for sure)
>> DRW Free
>> JIHO Free
>>
>> I really do not want to pay for a utility to do this.|
>>
>> they are not backed up.
>> there are no previous versions.
>>
>> Any suggestions?
>
> This is an undelete program, and not a scavenger for
> "busted" file systems. This should do the job.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuva
>
> Green dots mean the files it found, are intact.
> Red dots are bad news (cluster damage).
>
> Select the free version.
>
> https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva
>
> You'll be installing that on C: and the missing files
> are on a completely separate partition, so doing the
> install should be safe.
>
> In principle, a file can be recovered, simply by flipping
> a single byte in the $MFT entry.
>
> But if the program asks you to, save any recovered
> files or folders on something other than the "damaged"
> partition. You could make a partition on C: and
> put the goods there.
>
> Since the external drive is unlikely to have received
> write operations since this happened, you should
> have mostly green dots for the candidate files in
> the recovery list.
>
> Since Piriform was bought by AVAST/AVG, if they wanted to
> trick you into downloading an AV at the same time, they can.
> Be careful what you click, and read each screen carefully.
>
> *******
>
> Photorec is an entirely different concept, and is to be
> used when the file system is no longer readable perhaps.
> If Recuva gave you all red dots for the files, then I would
> not expect PhotoRec to magically bolt all the fragments
> back together. Life simply doesn't work that way.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoRec
>
> PhotoRec/TestDisk is typical FOSS, and doesn't have
> as strong of a commercial bend. It won't put an AV
> on your disk at least :-)

Although I have Recuva installed, it has failed on several occasions to
undelete files and to find deleted partitions to restore. The last full
(non-portable) version is Recuva v1.53.1087 released back in June 2016.
Piriform has no portable version. Well, they stopped releasing a
portable version long before they abandoned the full version. Yep,
Recuva is abandonware. It may still work, but it's over 5 years old.
Not quite as old as Windows 7 which was released 11 years ago, but
extended support for Windows 7 died 1-1/2 years ago.

In case something goes south, do an image backup before attempting any
restores within a partition. If whatever tool you use further corrupts
the partition, you could restore it from the image backup and start over
perhaps using a different recovery tool.

Shift-deleting files merely removes them from the MFT, so those cluster
become available for use later. However, if you kept writing to the
partition after the permanent delete operation, you could step on the
contents of those released cluster when they get reused, and undelete
won't help to recover what was there before in those overwritten
clusters.

As an alternative, I was also going to mention PhotoRec, but Paul beat
me to it. PhotoRec is a command-line (console mode) tool. No GUI. If
you aren't familiar with using console-mode programs, there is QPhotoRec
(https://codecpack.co/download/QPhotoRec.html). It's a frontend to
PhotoRec that builds the command line sent to PhotoRec.

PhotoRec supports around 480 file extensions (~300 file families), but
not all. I haven't found Piriform's web site claiming how many file
types are supported by Recuva. All I found was a few file types at:

https://www.ccleaner.com/docs/recuva/using-recuva/wizard-mode/specifying-file-types

Disk Drill (https://www.cleverfiles.com/disk-drill-windows-pro.html)
gets good reviews, but the free version is just lureware. It will only
recover up to 500MB of your missing files. The free versions is a demo
to show you what the product could do if you paid $89 for the Pro
version. Since you are trying to recover the deleted files, you sure
they have no value to you, so their non-value earns only freeware as
choices? Would be you very distressed if those files were not
recoverable? Or is recovery just something you're toying with trying?

On Thu, 09 Sep 2021 17:39:48 -0400, in alt.windows7.general, Paul
<nospam@needed.invalid>, wrote

>jackpatton@astraweb.com wrote:
>> I accidentally shift-deleted some 800 files and 60 folders from an external hard drive this morning
>> before i could cancel the delete folder operation and am looking for ways to recover the files.
>>
>> I downloaded, but have not installed:
>>
>> Recoverit (A pay service for sure)
>> DRW Free
>> JIHO Free
>>
>> I really do not want to pay for a utility to do this.|
>>
>> they are not backed up.
>> there are no previous versions.
>>
>> Any suggestions?
>
>This is an undelete program, and not a scavenger for
>"busted" file systems. This should do the job.
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuva
>
>Green dots mean the files it found, are intact.
>Red dots are bad news (cluster damage).
>
>Select the free version.
>
>https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva
>
>You'll be installing that on C: and the missing files
>are on a completely separate partition, so doing the
>install should be safe.
>
>In principle, a file can be recovered, simply by flipping
>a single byte in the $MFT entry.
>
>But if the program asks you to, save any recovered
>files or folders on something other than the "damaged"
>partition. You could make a partition on C: and
>put the goods there.
>
>Since the external drive is unlikely to have received
>write operations since this happened, you should
>have mostly green dots for the candidate files in
>the recovery list.
>
>Since Piriform was bought by AVAST/AVG, if they wanted to
>trick you into downloading an AV at the same time, they can.
>Be careful what you click, and read each screen carefully.
>
>*******
>
>Photorec is an entirely different concept, and is to be
>used when the file system is no longer readable perhaps.
>If Recuva gave you all red dots for the files, then I would
>not expect PhotoRec to magically bolt all the fragments
>back together. Life simply doesn't work that way.
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoRec
>
>PhotoRec/TestDisk is typical FOSS, and doesn't have
>as strong of a commercial bend. It won't put an AV
>on your disk at least :-)
>
> Paul

Worked like a Charm! I retrieved 882 out of 888 deleted files. No folders, of
course, but i will recreate as necessary and be simpler than the 60 that were
deleted.
I convinced RECUVA (in other words, looked around until i found the function) to
write its list of deleted files from the external disk with full paths to a txt
file just in case i need it (reference and all that).

I remember the old FAT table and how simple it was to recover files with the right
tools. I will suppose the $MFT is roughly analogous. (You may recall that the file
manager Xtree had a file undelete function at one point ages ago.)

I did retrieve to C disk to prevent overwriting clusters as I recovered files. And
the 6 files with overwritten clusters would be a mystery EXCEPT i moved maybe 50
files to that disk after the "accident" (the accident was that i was not paying
attention to where the focus was) and since the 4 tera. external is only about half
full, I did not expect it to overwrite clusters marked "available" by the accidental
delete function.

Anyway, thanks. I had previously ported RECUVA directly from my 32 bit XP machine
but I got the new 64 bit version to which you supplied the URL.

By the way, your message did not show up on Astraweb, where i was operating from
yesterday. I thought they just might be a bit slow with their NNTP operations, but
I checked again this AM and it was not there. I am now on the Motzarella server.

On Thu, 09 Sep 2021 17:39:48 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

>jackpatton@astraweb.com wrote:
>> I accidentally shift-deleted some 800 files and 60 folders from an external hard drive this morning
>
>This is an undelete program, and not a scavenger for
>"busted" file systems. This should do the job.
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuva
>
I am back on Astraweb out of curiosity. Your message, that this message refers to, still was not
here, but i retrieved it to Astraweb by your msg-id through the headers on my motzarella message, which
IS here on Astraweb, with no problem.

Aahhh, the vagaries of NNTP.......

jim (or jack, no matter)

On Thu, 9 Sep 2021 16:40:46 -0500, in alt.windows7.general, Rene Lamontagne
<rlamont@shaw.ca>, wrote

>On 2021-09-09 4:10 p.m., jackpatton@astraweb.com wrote:
>> I accidentally shift-deleted some 800 files and 60 folders from an external hard drive this morning
>> before i could cancel the delete folder operation and am looking for ways to recover the files.
>>
>> I downloaded, but have not installed:
>>
>> Recoverit (A pay service for sure)
>> DRW Free
>> JIHO Free
>>
>> I really do not want to pay for a utility to do this.|
>>
>> they are not backed up.
>> there are no previous versions.
>>
>> Any suggestions?
>>
>
>Lot of people are getting good results from 'Recuva'
>at
>
>https://recuva.en.softonic.com/download
>
>worth a shot and it is free.
>
>Rene

It worked well for me too. RECUVA did just that to 882 out of 888 files and
recovered 164 gigabytes of data.

just a
FACE
in the crowd......
(or jim, or jack, just don't call me late for dinner)