Sunday, August 1, 2010

Lost file or directory on NTFS

Occasionally a file, or complete subdirectory may go missing on an NTFS disk. The most common reason actually is operator error, maybe by accidently dragging adirectory into another directory. The way to recover from this situation is to search the disk for a known file, and then work out what has been moved where.

The same problem can also occur when a critical sector fails or is corrupted. This can leave the directory tree with a logical break, and so leave files with no correct location. CnW recovery software has a good solution to this problem. as part of the recovery options, it allows for recovery from file entries. It will either scan the known $MFT (NTFS directory file) for individual MFT entries, or it can scan the complete disk. When an MFT is found it is tested to see if the Master File Table entry is for a file or a directory. If for a file it is recovered, and the directory path then reconstructed as much s possible. For the files that have been lost, a dummy direvctory entry will be created, eg lostdir123, and all files related to the lost directory will be placed together. To find your lost file, either the recovered filoes can be searched, or the log examined to determine the new location

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