Recently the external HD with my complete iTunes library crashed and could not be repaired/accessed. Fortunately one of my children had a copy of it - but had deleted a substantial amount of classical music that did not interest him.
But after the deletion his HD had only been used to play the songs, nothing was added or edited, so I thought it would be easy to undelete or recover 'my lost music'.
My first disappointment was that the good old UNDELETE command in MS-DOS no longer seems to work in Windows 7. Correct?
I found Windows 7 information that deleted files can be recovered with the 'previous versions' option, but for my music no previous version could be found. Or did I look the wrong way?
Then I used three different file recovery systems: minitools data recovery, file recover, recover my files.
All three found tons of files (90% the same ones), but hardly any usable music. Most was crap - and you can only find out by testing each individual file.
First of all, the files names were often not the songtitles, but something like $BN76GTP4A. If a property field contains a song title and/or artist name and/or duration, it is often the incorrect one. The file itself too is often crap: it starts in the middle of a song, then after 10 seconds switches to a complete different piece of music - and so on. Unpredictable result.
I always thought that recovering/undeleting data from a 'non-affected' HD was easy as drinking a cup of tea. Apparently not.
Where are the days that it was enough to run MS-Dos > Undelete and find ALL deleted files complete and unharmed, with only the first file name letter replaced by _ or $. Those days seem gone. Why?
Is there still a similar recovering method available that brings my music back?
Thanks for your suggestions.
But after the deletion his HD had only been used to play the songs, nothing was added or edited, so I thought it would be easy to undelete or recover 'my lost music'.
My first disappointment was that the good old UNDELETE command in MS-DOS no longer seems to work in Windows 7. Correct?
I found Windows 7 information that deleted files can be recovered with the 'previous versions' option, but for my music no previous version could be found. Or did I look the wrong way?
Then I used three different file recovery systems: minitools data recovery, file recover, recover my files.
All three found tons of files (90% the same ones), but hardly any usable music. Most was crap - and you can only find out by testing each individual file.
First of all, the files names were often not the songtitles, but something like $BN76GTP4A. If a property field contains a song title and/or artist name and/or duration, it is often the incorrect one. The file itself too is often crap: it starts in the middle of a song, then after 10 seconds switches to a complete different piece of music - and so on. Unpredictable result.
I always thought that recovering/undeleting data from a 'non-affected' HD was easy as drinking a cup of tea. Apparently not.
Where are the days that it was enough to run MS-Dos > Undelete and find ALL deleted files complete and unharmed, with only the first file name letter replaced by _ or $. Those days seem gone. Why?
Is there still a similar recovering method available that brings my music back?
Thanks for your suggestions.
My Computer
At a glance
windows 7Genuine Intel u23004Gb?
- Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
- AcerAspire 1410 Netbook with external CD/DVD-RW
- OS
- windows 7
- CPU
- Genuine Intel u2300
- Motherboard
- ?
- Memory
- 4Gb
- Graphics Card(s)
- ?
- Sound Card
- ?
- Monitor(s) Displays
- ?
- Hard Drives
- Hitachi HTS
various WD external hard drives
- PSU
- ?
- Case
- ?
- Cooling
- ?
