Recovery after a CHKDSK

[patroclo]

Hi everybody,

I'd like to understand how CHKDSK works, because I received a hard disk in which a huge folder disappeared after a CHKDSK made by the customer.

My question is, how CHKDSK hides bad sectors?
It's worth to scan the disk only with a recovery software like R-studio? or I better use Data Extractor after regenerate translator?

Thank you

[admin]

Hello,

There is only way to retrieve the data since it's been moved to "FOUND.XXX" folder with changed file extensions.
This way is RAW recovery, you don't need any additional software just use Data Extractor. Perhaps you'll need to add some file headers into RAW recovery database in order to find nonstandard or certain file formats.
AFAIK there is no software that can assemble the folder structure in this case.
Check disk moves the files where bad sectors found to the special "FOUND.XXX" folders. It removes the real file extension and adds the standard extension "chk" to all files.
But visually or by RAW recovery you still able to find the typical headers of the files then recognize file formats.
Thus after Check disk "work" there are two bad things: location of files is missing and file extension is changed.

[patroclo]

Hello Sasha,

thank you for your replay.

I'll tell you what I've done before reading your answer:
I recovered folders FOUND.XXX with *.chk files from the drive to another one with rstudio, and then with a small utility like FileChk I renamed all the file extension, so right now I recovered a lot of files; but I recovered something like 40GB instead of 200GB the customer says he lost.

Now you suggest me to run RAW recovery but I don't understand if the result of RAW recovery would be a lot of *.chk files that I should rename, or it just recovers the files as they were before deleted.

BTW I'll try also this option, it's a 1TB hard drive, so it'll take time, but I will let you know the result.

Thanks for your help

[admin]

Hello,

RAW recovery will search the specified ranges (or entire drive) of sectors and compare all found file headers to the RAW recovery database.
If it finds a known file header that matches to some file format from database then you'll able to save a file with extension, there is no need to rename it.