Junk Files

[Alan_B]

I have a failed 20G hard drive that ZAR reported was mostly empty (which I think is correct). When I recovered the contents I got about 15G worth of files! I noticed some files caused a long pause during the recovery process and these are all located in the C:\Windows\Application Data\Identities folder. These files are very large (about 90% of the total) and some have unlikely names such as "fullscr.een", "MMdd,y.yyy", "Switzerl.and" although others are just random characters. Just to be clear, these are files, not the folder that contains the Outlook Express emails which is in the same location.

I presume thse files are some artefact of the process and I can delete them. Is this correct?

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Yes. These are safe to delete.

These artifacts are the inevitable result of the filtering tradeoff. We cannot filter too aggressive because we may remove some useful data (in case we mistake damaged filesystem structures as the garbage). Hence, some amount of garbage passes filters and comes up as these junk files.