Is there such a thing as a mass file identifier app? I messed up one of my partitions....

  • Thread starter Thread starter RegularJoe
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R

RegularJoe

I fubarred my D:\ partition, then got it back (using PTedit in Partition Magic).
Then I scandisked in DOS and it gave me a longfilename error and said to run Scandisk in
Windows.
So I did that.

Now I have 8700 files called File####.chk.
The first thing I did was to associate *.chk with Metapad , and then start going thru each
file to see if I can tell what type of file it is so I can "fix" it.
Then, when I found a lot of files I couldn't discern, I reneamed ALL those files *.rar and
have been trying to open each one to see if that works.
I have been successful in retrieving quite a few files but.....
I still have 7, 337 files to check and am getting a little discouraged. Plus, all the
files that didn't open with Winrar will have to be tested as doc, exe or jpg or bmp files!

I didn't back up any of that stuff. There are papers my son wrote, pictures of family,
letters, and many more important files in that mess I need to retrieve.

Does anyone know of an app that can read a file and tell me what type of file it is? or
even its original name?
Or just have any ideas?

(Talk about learning a lesson!)

Thanks!
Joe
 
RegularJoe said:
I fubarred my D:\ partition, then got it back (using PTedit in Partition Magic).
Then I scandisked in DOS and it gave me a longfilename error and said to run Scandisk in
Windows.
So I did that.

Now I have 8700 files called File####.chk.
The first thing I did was to associate *.chk with Metapad , and then start going thru each
file to see if I can tell what type of file it is so I can "fix" it.
Then, when I found a lot of files I couldn't discern, I reneamed ALL those files *.rar and
have been trying to open each one to see if that works.
I have been successful in retrieving quite a few files but.....
I still have 7, 337 files to check and am getting a little discouraged. Plus, all the
files that didn't open with Winrar will have to be tested as doc, exe or jpg or bmp files!

I didn't back up any of that stuff. There are papers my son wrote, pictures of family,
letters, and many more important files in that mess I need to retrieve.

Does anyone know of an app that can read a file and tell me what type of file it is? or
even its original name?
Or just have any ideas?
Click to expand...

If you could mount the partition under Linux you could use the 'file'
command which works by looking at the 'magic' numbers in the first few
bytes of files. You should be able to do this with a bootable Linux CD
to save actually installing Linux.
 
Whats metapad??
any hex editor will load the files..look at the first few bytes
ie:
BM = *.bmp files
PK = *.zip files
RAR = *.rar files
 
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