hello to anyone who finds themselves in this situation. i believe i have found a solution, if your drive is in fairly good condition, and you haven't written anything to it since "the crash" or whatever. never write to the corrupted drive at any time while recovering data.
here's what i did:
1. obtain GetDataBack NTFS. use default settings, and check all boxes in the options except for "Excessive search".
2. SPECIFY LOGFILE in the Environment tab of Options. you'll need it later.
3. select your corrupted drive in step 2, then hit next.
4. take a nap, run it overnight, whatever. my drive was 300gb and it took about 5 hours to scan.
5. when the scan is done, you'll probably see a bunch of folders that you recognize. that's good, recovering is straightforward (just select, right click -> copy).
if, however, you see files that have blank filenames, you will need to rename them yourself. the way to determine the filename is by using the ID number in the "ID" column of the Recovery Browser and by looking the logfile you specified in step 2:
a. let's say you have a file with a blank name. scroll to the right to see what its ID number is.
b. open the log file and search for "ID", no quotes, where is the ID number from step b. hopefully something will be found, like this:
Added '' ID155, Mft#4E22
@sec 006080E3(2), parent 4E20, 3/12/2007
c. now, search for the Mft#, so in this case you would do a search for "4E22", no quotes. that should take you to the line with the filename you want, like so:
Index info added FileName=GGS3SRanBat2.1.divx, Mft=x4E22[x1], ParentMft=x4E20[x1], ( )
d. rename your blank-named file accordingly, then right-click -> Copy to recover.
this filename-recovery method works for directories too.
sometimes, a whole folder will be deleted, and you don't want to rename each thing individually. that's ok. select that folder and copy it, and when prompted with the "file already exists" message or whatever, just select the "rename all" option. so then you'll get a folder with files like (2), (3), (4), etc. now, to rename them all, just go to the logfile and grab the filenames. usually the whole folder's contents will be listed in a group in the logfile. copy those lines into a new text file, and isolate the filenames by surrounding each side of the names with tab characters (search and replace is your friend). then copy paste into excel. now you should have a column of filenames, and columns of other stuff that was next to the filenames. all you need is the column with filenames. in excel, it's easy to create a sequence of numbers, just by dragging the lower-right corner of a number. ok, rest should be self-explanatory. you should ultimately get something like this:
ren (2) "01 astair.mp3"
ren (3) "02 acting like a fool.mp3"
ren (4) "03 tv gods.mp3"
ren (5) "04 shimmering fields.mp3"
ren (6) "05 movin' on.mp3"
ren (7) "B0001Z8OCK.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1].jpg"
just paste into your dos prompt.
hope this helps someone! i'm just happy i got all my files back
