Possible to Restore Photos/Documents from Formatted USB Or Old Laptop?

In answer some of your questions:

You'd know if you'd securely wiped files or free space as it would require running software to do it.

If DiskDigger (with the image filter applied) didn't find anything on the USB then yes - it's gone.

If you open the TestDisk results folder and there are a huge number of files to look through try sorting them A-Z by file extension and bulk delete anything that's not an image. Then view the results using something like Irfanview and use the thumbnail viewer. If the file ever existed on your hard drive and TestDisk hasn't found it - then it's gone.

Here's an example of a folder containing a small number of images - sorry but I don't have any folders that contain thousands if images to use as an example.



I'd suggest that USB's are a really unreliable method of storing any important data. They're okay for copies but shouldn't really be used for originals. (In my opinion).

If you scanned your entire hard drive then you chose the wrong partiton.

It should look something like this if you want to scan a USB:

Either way there's no easy way to recover only the files that you're looking for. It's a question of recovering everything and deleting anything that's not an image. With DiskDigger there are file type filters and rather than clicking through eaxh preview it's better to just recover the whole lot then use an image viewer to view the files.

If you want to try less advanced software you could try Lazesoft Recovery Suite Home Edition as from memory it can restore folder structure (recover folders) but it's a while since I've used it and currently I don't have it installed. If you get stuck - give it a try.

When you install Irfanview you should see two desktop icons appear. One of those is "Irfanview Thumbnails" so just run it and browse to the folder that you want to view.

Alternatively try Start> Run

then copy and paste the following into the window that opens:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\IrfanView\i_view32.exe" /thumbs

Press enter.

Well as you stated that the images were stored on USB that was formatted then personally I'd run DiskDigger on the USB followed by PhotoRec on the USB. It shouldn't take long. If nothing shows up then yes - run PhotoRec on your hard drive (it will take ages) and from the extacted results delete anything that's not an image.

If you like you could try using XCOPY to copy only images to another folder but you'll need to use a command line.

Open an Elevated Command Prompt

Then use XCopy to copy only image files fro the results folder to a new folder.

Example for my machine/ user name:

Xcopy C:\Users\Chris\Desktop\Toolbox 2\TestDisk\recup_dir.1\*.jpg C:\Users\Chris\Desktop\NewFolder /s

so you need to use:

Xcopy Full path to results folder\*.jpg Full path to desination folder /s

Will check this thread again in a couple of hours. Will be away from my machine for a while.