Problem with ext hd

casey · 8 Sep 2015 at 20:12

I have a ssd ext HD which I used on a relatives laptop and now it is only showing 1 prog. The rest of the the progs seems to be there but are not showing on my PC. Is there any way I can get them to show again?
Thanks.

bledd · 9 Sep 2015 at 09:57

Expand on this.

Do you mean you installed some programs on this on another machine and now you have no shortcuts to them on your machine?

If so, programs don't work like this, they will have stored info in the registry on the other machine which your machine doesn't have.

You can get 'portable' applications which can work perfectly this way, but you need to hunt them down. Your average large program won't work unless it's a single exe.

casey · 9 Sep 2015 at 10:51

My relation had a problem with Chrome so I used my SSD which had a portable uninstaller on it to do a thorough uninstall of Chrome & reinstall. This worked although it didn't cure Chrome. After he had left I plugged my hard disk back into my PC & now the only Prog showing on the drive is the portable uninstaller.
His laptop was a Sony running Win 7. I don't understand why this should happen.

bledd · 9 Sep 2015 at 11:10

Only you can say what is/was on there. I don't see a question here.

To fix Chrome, run the uninstaller that comes with it, then remove..

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Google

Now reinstall it.

casey · 9 Sep 2015 at 11:20

I know what is on it. pics vid music macrium backups etc. I ran Togethershare data recovery & they are all still on there. I saved a few pictures but I have to buy it to get it all. Why don't they show so I can use them.
Not concerned with chrome.

linktoinsanity · 9 Sep 2015 at 13:30

Check the files aren't hidden?

There is also a chance that when you plugged it into the relative's PC you formatted the drive (most likely Quick Format if the recovery tool can see them). In the data recovery tool, what state does it say the files are in?

casey · 9 Sep 2015 at 14:09

Files not hidden. In recovery tool it says files are excellent. As I said I recovered a few photo's perfectly OK, so it seems they are all there just can't see them.
Thanks for your help so far.

linktoinsanity · 10 Sep 2015 at 15:50

It sounds like the drive has been formatted. Fortunately most sound to be in excellent condition so you might want to recover the data onto another drive, then copy the files back so you do not lose anything.

Mattus · 13 Sep 2015 at 15:32

Use Recuva to get the files back - free software.

Probably obvious, but don't write to the drive in any way until you've recovered all the files.

casey · 13 Sep 2015 at 20:15

Am trying Recuva in normal scan which has fond over 6000 files but trying to sort them out is a nightmare. The pics it has found 2,3,or 4 copies of each, the vidoes don't work, some it hasn't found & the amount of rubbish is enormous. To do a deep scan it est time of 1 day.

Mattus · 13 Sep 2015 at 20:39

You could try different recovery software but if the recovered vids don't work, it may be that part of them has already been overwritten. Recovery software only works to the extent that no new data has been written to the part of the disk where the deleted files are.

Re: the duplicate copies and rubbish, the process is going to be a bit messy I'm afraid. The recovery software will pull up every deleted file it can find, but it can't tell the difference between the files you're looking for and stuff you deleted previously.

Do you have any other copies of this data? If you do it's going to be easier to restore from there than to run the recovery (but don't copy anything back onto the external disk until you're sure you won't need to recover anything else from it).