Recover data from Found.000 folder

[Zombi]

Here's the deal:

Woke up this morning turned on the PC and when Win2K Pro started chdsk notice some error on 1 of my partition drives. It went on to try and fix it and in the process save the files

When all is done and I open My Computer to take a look at my drives, 2 very important folders that were in that partition were no more and 1 new folder called Found.000 was created on the root of that partition. It's full of chkdsk files and I'm guessing these chkdsk files are my deleted files. Is there anyway I can recover those data? Hopefully using a free or cheap software?

Also I've been told not to write on the drive I want to recover files from but I was wondering: if I find a software to recover the files is it OK to install it on my C drive even though the partition with the data I want to recover is on the same drive as C?

Any help would be welcomed, thanks in advance

[junkie]

scandisk (or chkdsk, whatever) saves lost clusters as files, each cluster as an individual file. lost clusters as in no longer part of any file. so unless you know _exactly_ which cluster belonged to what part of which file, there's pretty much nothing you can use them for. you might as well just delete them...

[Zombi]

scandisk (or chkdsk, whatever) saves lost clusters as files, each cluster as an individual file. lost clusters as in no longer part of any file. so unless you know _exactly_ which cluster belonged to what part of which file, there's pretty much nothing you can use them for. you might as well just delete them...

586449756[/snapback]

Are you sure? Then why would windows save the files then if there's nothing I'm able to do to recover them? That's some real bad news there ;-(

[junkie]

i'm pretty sure. lost clusters mean they are LOST. the FAT/MFT lost track of those datablocks, and couldnt tell which file they belonged to when it was 'asked' by chkdsk.

[SweWiLLiE]

Bull****.

I've experienced the same issue with the "found.000", "found.001" etc. directorys .

In my case I was missing some pictures and mp3s.

I checked every file in those folders, found my mp3s and pictures, renamed to their original names and moved them to where the belonged.

If your not so lucky though, the files in "found.000" could just be garbage.

So check every file in that folder first before you delete anything.

[Zombi]

Bull****.

I've experienced the same issue with the "found.000", "found.001" etc. directorys .

In my case I was missing some pictures and mp3s.

I checked every file in those folders, found my mp3s and pictures, renamed to their original names and moved them to where the belonged.

If your not so lucky though, the files in "found.000" could just be garbage.

So check every file in that folder first before you delete anything.

586450090[/snapback]

Cool I hope I'm as lucky. Indeed the files I'm missing are also most of my itunes songs and most importantly family pictures and video files. What did you use to check the files? And when I want to recover them, just rename them?

[Smit]

Have you tried a file recovery tool? I know they are for when you delete files but it still may work.

[Jeremy1]

This is a good indicator that your hard drive may be going bad. You should look into replacing it ASAP.

[junkie]

Bull****.

I've experienced the same issue with the "found.000", "found.001" etc. directorys .

In my case I was missing some pictures and mp3s.

I checked every file in those folders, found my mp3s and pictures, renamed to their original names and moved them to where the belonged.

If your not so lucky though, the files in "found.000" could just be garbage.

So check every file in that folder first before you delete anything.

586450090[/snapback]

now that is bull****.

in the 'found' folder you have files, GENERATED by chkdsk from lost CLUSTERS. each file represents a cluster, or chain of clusters, that were PARTS of files. entire files dont get lost. that is not a loss. if you know where a file begins, and where it ends, and you have data, than that file is not lost. do you really think these programs move your files from one folder to another and rename it for no reason?

[SweWiLLiE]

No, I don't think that, but i suspect that something happened to clusters in the area where my files happened to be.

You don't have to teach me anything, I'm writing about what have happend to me. Not once but multiple times.

It's the same story with academics. They only read, and when they finally do something they're completley lost

b'coz what they read doesn't hold water in the real world.

Like I said, this is first hand experience so it doesn't matter what you say.

[SweWiLLiE]

Cool I hope I'm as lucky. Indeed the files I'm missing are also most of my itunes songs and most importantly family pictures and video files. What did you use to check the files? And when I want to recover them, just rename them?

586450227[/snapback]

I just opened them in Notepad and looked at them.

Or, if you suspect a file is an mp3/aac/whatever, just rename the last 3 letters (like .mp3) and try playing it.

I had picaview installed at that time, so i just right-clicked the files until i saw a thumnail in the right-click-popup-menu.

Check the size of the files though. It isn't fun opening large files in notepad :p

[+allan MVC]

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen...kd_tro_kbnn.asp

[junkie]

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen...kd_tro_kbnn.asp

586450585[/snapback]

exactly what i was talking about. thank you for that link.

i guess it is settled whos talking bull**** and whos not.

[SweWiLLiE]

Nope.

I'm glad he posted that link also.

It confirmed what I was saying about opening the files in Notepad to see if they where restorable.

You can go and talk your bull**** somewhere else.

It's not that I'm calling you a liar, I'm just saying that sometimes you can restore complete files from found.000.

Case closed.

[+allan MVC]

While it is possible for a lost cluster to contain useful information, it is very rare. More often than not the data in a lost cluster is a copy of data already in another file (or even more likely, only a "piece" of data).

Some more interesting links on lost clusters if you are interested in learning rather than acting like children:

http://pcworld.about.com/magazine/1902p190id36586.htm

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/fat_errors.htm

http://www.bsu.edu/ucs/article/0,1370,6327-1987-4756,00.html

[SweWiLLiE]

Example 1

"Today, (a couple months later) i was going to upload some stuff to my server, and i stopped by my C: and found a weird folder: found.000

Opened it up, and inside was a folder: dir0000.chk

And inside that were all the missing textures! I was super happy, as i kept UT2003 installed, as the editor still worked, and the SFX were great for use in mods and stuff."

Example 2

"Well, it turned out I was lucky.. and I thought I'd add this as I didn't see it mentioned.

Check your scandisk/chkdsk .chk files (FILE0000.chk, FILE0001.chk, etc usually put in FOUND.000 folder). My bookmarks were there as one of those files, put there because something went awry I guess.

Whew."

Example 3

"Hooray!!! Some how XP must have squirreled those files away in a file called Found 000. Don't know how or why but all I know is I recovered all those erased files."

Example 4

"And the content of the folder ??? gone. vanished.

Later, I found that CHKDSK had created a folder called FOUND.000 in the root directory of that drive, and it contained tons of files serially numbered?"

"So, basically, it had taken the content of the folder (the lost one), and created these files.

Now, the data was present, but the task was to Identify the type of the file."

"So, now, 100% recovery is possible, but, its a painful process."

Example 5

"...it ran through the diskcheck prog. After that there were two directories called found.000 and found.001 or something like that - these were the winnt dirs and system32 dirs.

I copied then renamed them accordingly and put them in the right place, booted up the broken machine and it was fine."

Who's talking bull**** again?:sleep:p::whistle:e::laugh:h:

Edited August 30, 2005 by SweWiLLiE

[Zombi]

exactly what i was talking about. thank you for that link.

i guess it is settled whos talking bull**** and whos not.

586452457[/snapback]

Actually I don't see anywhere in the page posted where Microsoft said it's BS to recover files from chkdsk files. In fact it gives the same advice given to me by SweWiLLiE and I quote from the site:

"After the storage folder has been identified or created, one or more files with a name in the format Filennnn.chk are saved. (The first saved file is named File0000.chk, the second is named File0001.chk, and so on in sequence.) When Chkdsk finishes, you can examine the contents of these files with a text editor such as Notepad to see whether they contain any needed data (if the converted chains came from corrupted binary files, they are of no value). You can delete the .chk files after you save any useful data."

So obviously there's nothing BS in what was suggested to me by the poster, Microsoft agree that much... and of course I followed SweWiLLiE's suggestion and lo and behold I've been able to recover half of my pictures so far... :yes: and I'm not even halfway through.

So :argue: about what is BS don't help nobody in anyway when all it takes is for you to try something to see if it works or not.

Thank you for taking your time to address my issue and of course a special thanks to SweWiLLiE [and Mengha too] for actually help me solve my problem.

[it_waaznt_me]

Ahem .. Some of the .Chk files are recoverable and thats why they are saved by ChkDsk .. There are tools around that will help you recover them .. One of them Uncheck has worked for me once .. You might also wanna try ChkMate .. Best of luck ..

[Zombi]

Ahem .. Some of the .Chk files are recoverable and thats why they are saved by ChkDsk .. There are tools around that will help you recover them .. One of them Uncheck has worked for me once .. You might also wanna try ChkMate .. Best of luck ..

586458292[/snapback]

Thank you, I've actually been using Chk-mate so far and it seems to work good though slow. I will give the other one a try, and see if it's any faster.

[SweWiLLiE]

Thank you for taking your time to address my issue and of course a special thanks to SweWiLLiE [and Mengha too] for actually help me solve my problem.

586458159[/snapback]

No problem. Glad it worked out for you. :)

[Webwonder]

PC Inspector File Recovery worked for me on a flash drive and my found.000 were not even seen just a file marked 00b , the program is free, you will manually have to restore each file but it works, not here for an argumnent only lending my fortune in restoring my files, good luck...

[+BudMan MVC]

Talk about bringing back threads from the dead.. Aug 2005.. I highly he would still be looking for this ;)

[roadgeek9]

Talk about bringing back threads from the dead.. Aug 2005.. I highly he would still be looking for this ;)

Especially with 95 posts...