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I backed up everything on a memory stick before my puter got reformatted for a new windows installation... not actually sure what happened with the stick but it seemed to blank itself or something.

I've reformatted it and tried two freeware recovery tools that seem to be able to recover the files in an unreadable format and without any folder tree structure... I just end up with a couple of thousand files that have the right names and types but don't open, all on one folder.

Can anyone give me some pointers here?

Posted: 12-09-2013 20:39 Post subject:

Reformatted it? Why? That isn't going to help with recovering the data.
Sorry, can't help with any actual advice.

Posted: 12-09-2013 20:42 Post subject:

It didn't just 'forget' the data, it 'forgot' the format too.

With no format it won't show up as a drive when plugged in, so then there is no drive to tell the recovery tool to recover?

Posted: 12-09-2013 20:49 Post subject:

Posted: 12-09-2013 21:00 Post subject:

Some more specific clues might be helpful ...

Were you re-installing the same version of Windows, or upgrading to a newer version? If the latter, what were the old and new versions involved?

Posted: 13-09-2013 11:58 Post subject:

It was and still is Windows XP media centre... afaik the only difference is that the new version has an integrated SP3 - I only know that because the integrated SP3 has caused another bit of hardware I had plugged in to fail.

Posted: 13-09-2013 12:37 Post subject:

Probably this is screwed... I just tried another 3 different recovery tools and they aren't finding anything at all on the stick now.

I wonder if they make a false memory stick recovery tool that can find files that weren't there originally. Confused

Posted: 13-09-2013 16:19 Post subject:

I'm no Windows expert, but ...

You mentioned this is (?) the Media Center Edition.

The SP3 upgrade package did NOT include updates for the Media Center application, nor for Media Player. If the backed-up files were media files, it might be that you still have obsolete media app features in place that are causing an inability to recognize the files.

If the files were encrypted, there may be further complications.

Unfortunately, I suspect reformatting the memory stick added to the mess (perhaps to a terminal degree).

That's the extent of what I can suggest ...

Posted: 14-09-2013 16:47 Post subject:

Posted: 14-09-2013 18:14 Post subject:

Thinking about it, at a command-line DOS prompt in XP, you could have used the sys command to restore the FAT (file allocation table) to the memory stick.
I don't think the memory stick would be NTFS formatted; they are usually formatted with FAT32.
Command would be:

sys x:

...where x would be the letter used to designate the drive (the memory stick).

You'd need enough space on the memory stick to take system files, though. This essentially installs the basic files for making the drive bootable without reformatting.
I successfully used this once years ago to save a hard disk that had its FAT scrambled.

Posted: 14-09-2013 19:05 Post subject:

That's really useful information right now. Evil or Very Mad

Posted: 14-09-2013 20:26 Post subject: