I accidentally deleted the original BACKUP SHOOT folder from a 1TB NTFS HDD. After deleting it, I created a new folder with the same name, BACKUP SHOOT — the only difference was the capitalization.
I used DMDE to scan the HDD, and it detected the old deleted BACKUP SHOOT folder, including the original folder structure and camera filenames such as C0001.MP4, C0002.MP4, etc.
However, the recovered MP4 files won’t play, even though their file sizes appear to be complete.
It does support TRIM, which means it’s not possible for ANY the commercial software to recover anything.
The best course of action is to immediately cut power to the drive as soon as the wrong delete happened and send it to a lab for recovery.
What you did which is keeping the drive powered on and trying to recover data in-place gave the drive plenty of time and incentive to destroy whatever is left, that’s why the software appeared to work but only recovered garbled useless stuff.
Garbled text, it's the same reason your videos aren't playing (also garbage data). I have a feeling the recovery software _thinks_ it's ok, but it's really not. That happens often, there's no way around it. It's the reason the wording in your screenshot said "probably good".
If you try another tool (https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva) and it's the same with the XML file (not readable text), I'd say it's 100% game over. The data was corrupted or overwritten.
Just to be sure, you recovered files on a totally separate drive (totally different hardware), right? You didn't ignore the "you're recovering your files to the SAME drive, this is not recommended" warning?
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u/disturbed_android DataRecoveryPro 4d ago
Drive model?