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Question

Recovery of photos

Aug 21, 2016 6:28AM PDT

Using Lenovo Laptop G585. Newly Installed W10. Picassa 3.(3.9.141.259)

Hello Everyone,
Some time ago I downloaded photos from my camera into my Picassa 3 programme, before the installation of W10. They were shown in My Pictures.
A few days ago I downloaded two photos into my Picassa programme, after the installation of W10, and labelled them, they were also shown in My Pictures.
Today those pictures are all missing from both Picassa and My Pictures!
I have searched all my photos in Picassa and My Pictures. They are not to be found.

I downloaded a recovery programe called Recuva.(Piriform. 1.53) It took an hour an a half to search for and find all the deleted pictures - which included many thousands of pictures and images etc - not all photos - in the laptop.

Out of all the photos that I looked at, which took me over 3 hours, I found only one that was of the missing photos.

On hovering my mouse over it the pop-up information said - "Status - Unrecoverable" I found this strange as the representation of the photo was exactly what I was looking for.
I tried recovering it to a memory stick and also copying the image to a Word Document. However, these efforts were not successful!

My question is simply this - How can the recovery Programme show a missing photo so clearly and then it turns out to be unrecoverable?
(Incidentally, there was only one of this photo shown. Other photos shown amongst the recovered photos were sometimes shown many, many times amongst the recovered photos.)

I know that no one reading this question has a crystal ball, but does anyone have a guess as to how these over 35 photos could have been wiped from my computer?

Regards,
Colinito

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Photo's
Aug 21, 2016 2:37PM PDT

No idea how they got wiped.....software error/cockpit error?

The easy way to fix this is to grab the photo's from your backup.

What! you don't have backups!....shame on you.

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Answer
what did you upgrade from?
Aug 21, 2016 2:50PM PDT

what os did you upgrade from. also check your c drive and see if there is a windows.old folder. if so, your photos should be there.

as far as seeing files that are not recoverable. generally speaking, it just means there are portions there but not the whole file and that is the part that is seen.

as far as why those 35 pictures disappeared. it could be when you relabelled them, they lost their extension. If you know one of the pictures name, try searching using a wildcard search without any extension. for example *apple

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Recovery of photos/Photos/ What did you upgrade from
Aug 22, 2016 1:50AM PDT

Hello Bob_B and Renegade600,
OK, Bob, my wrist is considered duly smacked - no, I had no backup!

Renegade 600, I upgraded from W Home Premium.
I live in Spain and my technical Spanish is not too good, the W10 is necessarily in Spanish . I got no choice when downloading it - so navigating around this new troublesome W10 is a real pain! I shall continue to try to find the file you mention.

Thanks for the explanation of the files. Just for interest, I have not relabelled any of them. I wanted to put two new ones into the same folder that the others were in and that was when I found them missing! They were all filed under their title in Picassa and My Pictures, which I have tried to locate but was unable to do so. There is, apparently, a file search in W10 called Cortana, but, of course, it is unavailable in Spain!

I am rapidly growing disenchanted with this W10. Not only with the fact that I find navigating extremely difficult, but for whatever reason, the WiFi signal has been affected so badly that I now have to perch the laptop on the washing machine by the window in the most uncomfortable position and no leg room! The neighbour from whom I receive the signal has assured me that there has been no change to the modem or computer attachments in his house to cause this.

Don't you just love "progress"!?

Thanks to you both for your advice and suggestions.

Regards,

Colinito.

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Answer
Well My Pictures is a library and not a folder.
Aug 22, 2016 4:58AM PDT

Libraries are used to combine folders into one area where they can be viewed but stored in separate folders.

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Answer
Maybe your folder where the pictures reside
Aug 22, 2016 5:03AM PDT

was removed from the library. I would look in every folder that has pictures in it and also pictures folder on Onedrive.

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Well My Pictures is a library//Maybe your folder where....
Aug 22, 2016 2:09PM PDT

Hello Orlbuckeye,
You are completely correct, "my bad" I should have written library, forgive me, but I hope youi understood my meaning!
I am not sure about "onedrive" I shall research it and see where that takes me. In the meantime, I shall spend more time looking at each folder that contains photos - I just hope it doesn't take as long as the search through the deleted photos/pictures and images shown up by "Recuva" took!

Regards

Colinito

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Answer
Re: Recovery of photos
Aug 22, 2016 5:50PM PDT

Recovery programs work by reading the bits as they are on the drive.
Deleted items bits will remain on the hdd until overwritten.
Whenever you are using your computer you are likely writing to your hdd.

You could try another recovery program. Kickass Undelete is an open source option to try. Active File Recovery is a much slower and more thorough file recovery software.