Why Lost Data Can't be Recovered with Recoverit?

David Darlington

Jan 15, 2024 • Filed to: Answer Hard Drive Problems • Proven solutions

Recoverit prides itself as a software well and truly capable of recovering your lost data, but what happens when even Recoverit fails? Let’s find out:

1.The Symptoms of the Problem

In all likelihood, you’ll probably encounter one or all of these 3 issues:

1File name or folder structure is missing.

2Only part of the file content is viewable or cannot be open at all.

3File is recovered in 0KB but the product lists it with original size.

So, why does this happen? The solutions will be discussed below too.

2. The Background of the Problem

You can’t understand why Recoverit is unable to recover files if you don’t understand how storing files on hard drives work, so that’s the first issue to be tackled.

For any hard drive to be able to store files, it must first go through a dual-formatting process. There’s the low-level format and then there’s the Windows format.

Track and Sector

The low-level format is what essentially creates the sectors and tracks on a hard disk. A hard disk drive is made up of several mechanical components. Both tracks and sectors are located on the drive. A track is simply a ring on a disk where data is written or can be written. A sector, on the other hand, is the tiniest unit that can be accessed on a disk.

What low-level format does is divide the aforementioned platter into numerous tracks, then it subsequently creates several sectors on every track where data can be saved.

The absence of the ‘directory info’ means there’s nothing to determine how and where the written data will be stored. This is where the Windows format comes into play.

Windows format will take the unallocated space and create a partition on it while concurrently creating the ‘directory info’. Once the directory info is set, any new data that is written will thus be organized with a particular rule in the partition. File properties like the time stamp, the size info, and the name are all saved on the file table-or directory part of the drive; the lone exception is file content, which is written on the data storage section of the hard drive.

windows format

3. The Cause of the Problem

The only way you can guarantee a 100% flawless recovery of lost data is if both the directory info and the content in the storage sections have not been tampered with. If that is the case, then yes, a data recovery tool will be more than capable of recovering lost data.

Situation 1:File name or folder structure is missing.

Recoverit scans the hard drive in 2 different ways: The first is scanning based on file directory while the other is scanning based on storage. The former will highlight all the files with their retained and original names, directories, and attributes. But if the file directory has already suffered damage, the latter is capable of reading the sectors on the hard drive and making an attempt to rebuild every single file.

You will see the recovered files in the ‘RAW’ files (Extra Files) folder with unfamiliar names. For example, a picture that you once named ‘Birthday Party’ will be renamed to FILE004.jpg. Searching for your lost files might be a bit of annoyance in this situation because you can’t identify them using their original names, so you have to make do with clicking on and opening them to see which is which.

Situation 2:Only part of the file content is viewable or cannot be open at all.

Based on the above, once the original data being overwritten and the content has been damaged, there is little chance of getting recovered. So you can't view or open these corrupted files.