Pez D Spencer
Banned
I've got a BIG problem that I hope has a simple solution that I'm not aware of. I've got a truckload of photos on my PC from past vacations, events, and of various other things. After a year or two of putting it off, I finally decided to get them all organized.
Here's what happened...
Since quite a few of my photos are somewhat "provocative" pics of my wife, I used True Crypt to create an encrypted partition to store all my photos on. I did this because my cousin and other members of my family occasionally use my PC when they're visiting and I wanted to keep the photos hidden. For the convienience of having all my photos in one place, I put all of my photos on the encrypted partiton and not only the photos I wanted to keep hidden from view.
I've been storing all my photos on this encrypted partition for quite some time without problems. The problems came when I started trying to get everything organized. I have one folder that has vacation pictures in it which contains around 700 subfolders. For batch renaming files, I use Magic File Renamer (MFR). Unfortuneately MFR doesn't have an option to batch rename folders, only files. My intention was to use MFR to rename all the photos in each folder to the name of the parent folder with a numeric suffix. For example, what I was shooting for was a folder/file structure such as this: Vacations>Vacation 1>Vacation 1-1.jpg, Vacation 1-2.jpg, etc.
As I mentioned, MFR has no batch rename option for folders so as a workaround I simply used "Select All" to highlight all the 700 or so subfolders in the Vacations directory and chose rename. I've done this in the past on both nonencrypted as well as my encrypted partition without any problems. My intenion was to simply rename the first folder "Vacation" and let Windows rename all the other folders "Vacation (1), Vacation (2), Vacation (3)", and so on as it usually does.
But this time there was a problem. When I renamed all the folders, only the first 70 or so folders renamed like they should. The others took on the name of "Vacation original filename.". I don't know why Windows just appended the new filename in front of the old one like that but it did. It also added a period to the end as you can see in the example above. All this isn't so bad except for the fact that the folders that ended up with screwed names aren't accessible anymore. When I try to open, rename, copy, cut, or otherwise do anything to them I get the "Location is not available.. Make sure the disk is properly inserted.. might have been moved to a different location" type message.
I don't know what caused this or how to fix it. My only guess is that it has to do with True Crypt or Vista itself and stems from the fact that I tried to rename 700 folders at once. By doing so I must have screwed up the MFT for those folders or something. I mentioned that I used the above tactic for batch renaming folders before but never on this scale.
I know that the files are still on the drive because right-clicking the partition in "My Comptuer" shows that the same amount of disk space is occupied as before the botched renaming job. The Vacations folder occupies over 50 percent of the space on the partition so I know the actual data is still there, it's just inaccessible. However, if I browse to the Vacations folder and bring up properties for it then the properties window only shows the space occupied by the 70 or so folders that are actually accessible.
I've tried running ChkDsk on the partition but it didn't help. My only other idea is to run GetDataBack data recovery software on the partition to see if I can extract the data out. If I use the data recovery software though, it's probably going to pull all the files out one by one and I'll end up with a pile of 100,000 or so photos that I'll have to dig through and re-sort them which would take months and be a major headache.
I feel like an ass for saying this but no I don't have a backup and System Resotre is disabled on my system. Maybe I deserve it for being lazy.... Until a few weeks ago I had a backup image of the partition (I use Acronis True Image), but my hard drive space started getting slim so I deleted it. I figured that after all this time I never needed to use the backup so I'll just delete it and regain some space. I had planned to make a new image after I got everything organized but now it looks like I'm screwed.
If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them.
Thanks.
Here's what happened...
Since quite a few of my photos are somewhat "provocative" pics of my wife, I used True Crypt to create an encrypted partition to store all my photos on. I did this because my cousin and other members of my family occasionally use my PC when they're visiting and I wanted to keep the photos hidden. For the convienience of having all my photos in one place, I put all of my photos on the encrypted partiton and not only the photos I wanted to keep hidden from view.
I've been storing all my photos on this encrypted partition for quite some time without problems. The problems came when I started trying to get everything organized. I have one folder that has vacation pictures in it which contains around 700 subfolders. For batch renaming files, I use Magic File Renamer (MFR). Unfortuneately MFR doesn't have an option to batch rename folders, only files. My intention was to use MFR to rename all the photos in each folder to the name of the parent folder with a numeric suffix. For example, what I was shooting for was a folder/file structure such as this: Vacations>Vacation 1>Vacation 1-1.jpg, Vacation 1-2.jpg, etc.
As I mentioned, MFR has no batch rename option for folders so as a workaround I simply used "Select All" to highlight all the 700 or so subfolders in the Vacations directory and chose rename. I've done this in the past on both nonencrypted as well as my encrypted partition without any problems. My intenion was to simply rename the first folder "Vacation" and let Windows rename all the other folders "Vacation (1), Vacation (2), Vacation (3)", and so on as it usually does.
But this time there was a problem. When I renamed all the folders, only the first 70 or so folders renamed like they should. The others took on the name of "Vacation original filename.". I don't know why Windows just appended the new filename in front of the old one like that but it did. It also added a period to the end as you can see in the example above. All this isn't so bad except for the fact that the folders that ended up with screwed names aren't accessible anymore. When I try to open, rename, copy, cut, or otherwise do anything to them I get the "Location is not available.. Make sure the disk is properly inserted.. might have been moved to a different location" type message.
I don't know what caused this or how to fix it. My only guess is that it has to do with True Crypt or Vista itself and stems from the fact that I tried to rename 700 folders at once. By doing so I must have screwed up the MFT for those folders or something. I mentioned that I used the above tactic for batch renaming folders before but never on this scale.
I know that the files are still on the drive because right-clicking the partition in "My Comptuer" shows that the same amount of disk space is occupied as before the botched renaming job. The Vacations folder occupies over 50 percent of the space on the partition so I know the actual data is still there, it's just inaccessible. However, if I browse to the Vacations folder and bring up properties for it then the properties window only shows the space occupied by the 70 or so folders that are actually accessible.
I've tried running ChkDsk on the partition but it didn't help. My only other idea is to run GetDataBack data recovery software on the partition to see if I can extract the data out. If I use the data recovery software though, it's probably going to pull all the files out one by one and I'll end up with a pile of 100,000 or so photos that I'll have to dig through and re-sort them which would take months and be a major headache.
I feel like an ass for saying this but no I don't have a backup and System Resotre is disabled on my system. Maybe I deserve it for being lazy.... Until a few weeks ago I had a backup image of the partition (I use Acronis True Image), but my hard drive space started getting slim so I deleted it. I figured that after all this time I never needed to use the backup so I'll just delete it and regain some space. I had planned to make a new image after I got everything organized but now it looks like I'm screwed.
If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them.
Thanks.
