Deleted file / Corrupt USB drive

[Techie2000]

So in usual July-style, I've had a teacher come to me with a bitlocker encrypted USB drive containing a full completed set of reports where the documents have vanished.

 

I have run several recovery programs including OnTrack Easy Recovery, Recuva, M3 Bitlocker recovery, OfficeRecovery and several others over the past 24 hours without any luck. All of them find the files and know they are Word docs, however upon opening, they simply just look like random characters. The Word repair programs just error out with 'invalid file' or 'part of the document is missing or damaged'. The Word open and repair also does the same.

 

Can anyone be our saving grace and recommend a really good recovery software that I can either run on the drive or the files to give her some hope? (The reports were due in last Friday, so I think panic has definitely set in now! I have explained that the likelihood of having lost the reports is 99% now).

[chazzy2501]

spinrite can run on flash media and has fixed it. As it works on sectors it won't care if it's encrypted. if you have a copy give it a go.

[cw222]

If that doesn't work the free version of FTK or something like CAINE may be worth a look. It's used for digital forensics but contains tools for data recovery.