Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Can FILERECOVERY harm my disks?
Can fragmentation of the drive affect the result of the recovery?

Can I investigate the quality of my deleted files before saving them?
Can I recover data on a Flash Card™ or SmartMedia™?
Can I use FILERECOVERY to recover data from CD's, CDR's and DVD's?
Does FILERECOVERY also recover all NTFS permissions for a deleted file?
Does FILERECOVERY rescue every kind of file format or just some?
Does FILERECOVERY run in the background, monitoring your files as you create, save or delete them?
During the saving I do receive the error "could not write to destination file", what does this mean?
For what are the recovered .$efs files?

I cannot find my deleted file. Why?

I cannot open the Help file. Why?

I cannot open the recovered files with software program applicable to the type of the file recovered. Why?
I get this error message everytime I try to start the software: Error loading "INT13EXT.VXD"
Is it possible to recover lost files to a CDR/RW drive?

What does the name 'MFT3500' for a deleted folder mean?

Can FILERECOVERY harm my disk?

As long as the drive is not physically damaged there is no risk in using the software. FILERECOVERY only reads from the drive, and does NOT write to it at any time by itself.

Can fragmentation of the drive affect the result of the recovery?

Fragmentation in NTFS should not effect the results of the recovery. Information about a file's allocation is stored in a MFT entry. However with the FAT file system, this information is stored in the FAT and this information will be lost after deleting, so the lower the fragmentation of the drive is, the higher the chance of a recovery is.

Can I investigate the quality of my deleted files before saving them?

Yes, FILERECOVERY contains a build-in file, text and hexdump viewer which lets you investigate the quality of your files. The text viewer can only applied to plain-text files but the file and hexdump viewer allows experts to view the series of data as it would be stored during saving.

Can I recover data on a Flash Card™ or SmartMedia™?

Yes, that's possible, but your media has to be appear as a logical Windows drive. Look at you camera manufacturer if it supports a special driver software that will show the smart media as a logical Windows drive. If no driver is supported you can buy a memory card reader. There are several types: for notebooks (PC-CARD / PCMCIA) and for PCs (USB, IDE). Ask your local computer shop!

Can I use FILERECOVERY to recover data from CD's, CDR's and DVD's?

No, FILERECOVERY is a software for hard drives, floppy disks, Jazz drives and Zip drives only.

Does FILERECOVERY also recover all NTFS permissions for a deleted file?

No, it recovers the file information, but the privileges should be re-edited onto the file.

Does FILERECOVERY rescue every kind of file format or just some?

FILERECOVERY can recover all files, but the files may not have been overwritten.

Does FILERECOVERY run in the background, monitoring your files as you create, save or delete them? In other words, will it only recover files that were lost after FILERECOVERY was installed?

The program does not monitor any files. It get the files by examining the file system (so called on-disk format of the files). There the files are marked with special attributes and names. Recovering is simular: the programs scans the hard disk and searches for a special pattern: the stamp of a directory ('.' or '..') and then assumes a lost directory.

During the saving I do receive the error "could not write to destination file", what does this mean?

This may occur if you overwrite a prior saved file and another software application is using this file. Close all applications and then try again to save the file.
It may also occur because of the language character you are using - try to rename the file name and then save again the file.

For what are the recovered .$efs files?

These files are packed raw encrypted files that will be imported into a new NTFS file during saving. If the importing was successful, these files will be deleted automatically. If the file could not be imported (because it was not saved to a NTFS volume), you may use the FILERECOVERY tool 'efsimport.exe' for importing the file.

I cannot find my deleted file. Why?

If you deleted the file in the Recycle Bin or emptied the Recycle Bin, refer to File System Issues for more information.
If your file cannot be found during find operation, the deleted file/directory may be still on disk but is no longer referenced by an existing folder. In this case you will need to run the 'Find lost data' search. In the case this process does not find your file you may need to run the 'Full scan/ find format' search. See the User Guide for more information. If all search operation were performed but you did not find your file, it may be overwritten in parts or complete and FILERECOVERY cannot be used to recover the complete file.

I cannot open the Help file. Why?

The Help will is a HTML Help file. Under Windows 95 you've to download this support from Microsoft (HTML Help Support). Under Win98/ME/NT2000/XP this is already included.

I cannot open the recovered files with software program applicable to the type of the file recovered. Why?

Your files were overwritten by other data. In this case there is no way to retrieve the data.

I get this error message everytime I try to start the software: Error loading "INT13EXT.VXD".

Try to copy the .VXD file that can be found in the FILERECOVERY program folder into your WINDOWS \ SYSTEM directory. The message will disappear.

Is it possible to recover lost files to a CDR/RW drive?

FILERECOVERY is not a CDRW burning software! Anyway you can save to a CDRW if the software/ hardware supports packet recording. You have to install an UDF driver for your CDRW drive. Then you can save files like to a hard drive to the CDRW drive (This feature is already included in Windows XP).

What does the name 'MFT3500' for a deleted folder mean?

If FILERECOVERY finds on NTFS drives a deleted file or directory whose parent folder (the folder which contains this file) is known on the basis of the MFT entry number but that exists no longer, it will display the MFT entry number of the not existing parent folder because the exactly name is no longer available. The root folder has a special meaning, because it is the entrance to all the other folders on a drive. That is why FILERECOVERY names it as 'MFT5 (Root)'. It is advisable to look in this folder first when you are looking through the recovered files.