Recover deleted videos

D

doseamin

New Member
My wife accidentally deleted a few videos and we tried a few software but no luck yet. Anyone in here had successfully recovered deleted files? If yes, would you mind sharing it in here?
 
What recorder? It's a bit difficult to advise if we don't know.
At a wild guess, probably not.
 
What did you do to "tried a few software" - take the drive out and connect it to PC? You do realise the drive is not compatible with Windows??

I've not refreshed myself on the details of the 1100S specifically, but all the more recent Humax range encrypt the video files on disk, and some use encrypted file systems (and old models that do neither of those have custom file systems). To have any chance of success at all:
  • Hope you don't have an encrypted file system;
  • Hope absolutely nothing has been written to the disk since deletion;
  • Identify the formatting of the disk (probably Ext3);
  • Use tools specifically for the format of the disk (probably by going Linux).
Standard video file recovery tools may have a hard time identifying the blocks that make up a specific file because of the encryption, so you will probably be reduced to general undelete utilities and a great deal of manual unpicking. I'm not familiar with the general specification of Ext3, but it would not surprise me at all if it is a lot more complicated to undelete a file than the standard DOS trick of simply reinstating the file name in the FAT (as long as none of the blocks were over-written)!

When faced with the difficulties, one would normally conclude it's too much trouble with potentially no result, and "it's only telly". More will come along in a moment or two.

(I think this discussion would be better filed in the 1100S section. Update: now moved.)
 
Last edited:
Q2. No. Not without a lot of trouble it seems. The 1100S has catchup of some sort doesn't it?
If all else fails, BH's second th last paragraph rules. "It's only telly".
 
Black Hole said:
What did you do to "tried a few software" - take the drive out and connect it to PC? You do realise the drive is not compatible with Windows??

I've not refreshed myself on the details of the 1100S specifically, but all the more recent Humax range encrypt the video files on disk, and some use encrypted file systems (and old models that do neither of those have custom file systems). To have any chance of success at all:
  • Hope you don't have an encrypted file system;
  • Hope absolutely nothing has been written to the disk since deletion;
  • Identify the formatting of the disk (probably Ext3);
  • Use tools specifically for the format of the disk (probably by going Linux).
Standard video file recovery tools may have a hard time identifying the blocks that make up a specific file because of the encryption, so you will probably be reduced to general undelete utilities and a great deal of manual unpicking. I'm not familiar with the general specification of Ext3, but it would not surprise me at all if it is a lot more complicated to undelete a file than the standard DOS trick of simply reinstating the file name in the FAT (as long as none of the blocks were over-written)!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the details. I don't know the disk was encrypted, which is hard to get back lost data under such a protection.
 
doseamin said:
Thanks for the details. I don't know the disk was encrypted, which is hard to get back lost data under such a protection.
Click to expand...

Vaserka said:
You need to unlock the disk before recoverring deleted videos ,
Click to expand...

I think there is some sloppy language causing confusion here.
The disk is not encrypted or locked.
The recorded files are encrypted by the specific system (processor, motherboard, ??), which holds the encryption key, and stored on the disk. So you need the same system to unlock those files on playback. (This is why you can't take a disk out of a faulty machine and play the programmes on a different device.)
 
I think there is some confusion here.

On the early release G2 machines it wasn't possible to even access the recording partition, let alone see the files on a Linux booted computer. It now seems you can see the files but they of course remain encrypted.

The obvious conclusion was the original software encrypted the actual recording partition, this appears to have been changed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top