# Recovering orphaned file



## ToonKid (Mar 7, 2010)

So a few hours ago chkdsk was run suddenly I don't know why but I let it run anyways, so once it performed steps 1 & 2 it went on and on about "recovering orphaned files" and what I got from the last few hours was an ever growing list of recovered o-files at least right now this is what I'm getting
"Recovering orphaned file $RHEOHV3HF.jpg (706013) into directory file 6771"
Over 700,000+ jpgs recovered all named like "$Rxxxxxx.jpg" and as of right now it's still going and I don't think it will stop soon and I don't want it to stop, not now but a long while ago after when it started I recognized some file names that I know what they are and what happens if one comes along to be recovered later? Anyways what should I do? What do all these jpgs mean and why are there so many?


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## pip22 (Nov 21, 2004)

Why are there so many - probably because the hard drive is failing and that's why so many files are getting damaged. The JPG files are digital photographs. You need to save as much data as you can, then replace the hard drive with a new one.

Oh, and that's why it's so important to keep at least one backup copy of all your pictures and other stuff on a separate hard drive because they can fail at any time, and you might not realise it until it's too late to save anything.


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## fairnooks (Oct 1, 2007)

Its even possible the drive is ok except for corruption in the partition table. Chkdsk is very dumb, simply checking two numbers against one another for each record and if they don't match it will orphan perfectly good files.
As alluded to, hopefully you have backups so this doesn't turn into a long and dicey task.


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