undelete big files - mission impossible?

Posted by johnrembo on Super User See other posts from Super User or by johnrembo
Published on 2010-03-29T12:22:37Z Indexed on 2010/03/29 12:33 UTC
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Filed under:

outlook

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file-recovery

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ntfs

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undelete

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large-files

Hi,

I've accidentaly deleted outlook.pst (6.7GB) file, while there was only 400MB free space left on primary NTFS partition (winxp).

I've tried several recovery tools to get this file back. "Ontrack Easy Recovery Pro" found 0 pst files (complete scan mode), while "Recover My Files" in sector scan mode found 5 pst's, but 4 of them of sizes from 3 to 28 KB, while the 5th one - 1Gb.

I've managed to succesfuly recover 1Gb pst file, which was 1 year old copy (the one used after the latest windows reinstall).

Now, I'm frustrated and confused

Why 1 year old file was succesfuly recovered if there were only 400MB left on primary partition?
Where's 6.7GB file gone?
I did some reading (i.e. here), and it seems that there's almost no probability to retrieve the file I'm looking for, but wait - none of recovery tools i've used found zero-sized pst file, moreover - if due to fragmentation a file might be corrupted - we could use scanpst.exe to fix some errors and survive with 10 or 100 emails missing - whatever.
Could you please recommend some more sophisticated recovery tools for this particular task?

Appretiate your help - thanks in advance

© Super User or respective owner

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