Files recovered but unviewable

[zarfan]

Recommended to use your website program by a forum user at DP Review.
Many thanks for providing such a useful program.
I use a WD 40 GB ide drive in a usb caddy as storage of photos.
W XP SP2 tells me it is empty.
ZAR found the folder system and many files containing my photos.
(At least I know I did not delete the photos).

(I submitted the report) but when I tried to view some the saved photos neither Windows Photo viewer or Irfanview was able to recognise the file with comments
'Cant read file header'
'Unknown file format or file not found'

Have I or some combination of W XP SP2/usb caddy destroyed these files beyond recovery?

Regards
Graeme Shaw

[Alexey V. Gubin]

1. Just for the case, did you use the "Recover simple volume" mode or "Recover digital images" mode? For a 40GB hard drive you need to select "Recover a simple volume..." mode.

As you say the folder tree was found (reasonably intact), I suppose the correct mode was used.

I'd say that generally, FAT is more "vulnerable". It is enough to damage both FAT copies and all the fragmented files will come out partially readable or unreadable at all.

2. What type of the filesystem was on the drive (FAT or NTFS)?
3. How many files (and different folders) did you check? Bad files tend to group tougether (in terms of folder structure) quite often.