Summary of set up :
Kingston 8gb USB Thumbdrive running Portable apps
Thunderbird 3.1.7
Summary of problem
OK, so my PC decided to spectacularly crash on Xmas Eve (date not important!), and after a quick reboot of the PC and successful re-start of portable apps and Thunderbird Portable 3.1.7 I noticed ALL of my work emails going back from January this year (2010) are missing.
I have 2 main inboxes :
Work - Collecting mail from work POP server
Home - Collecting mail from personal Gmail
Apart from the above inboxes I also use local folders for downloading old emails from other random accounts I no longer use (hotmail etc) but still like to keep an eye just in case someone still contacts me.
My Home email folders (and emails) are all still there and there is no problem with that folder, but my Work folder is empty, and I mean EMPTY!!
Until the crash my folders were set up as follows :
WORK
> Inbox
> 1001 - January 10
> 1002 - February 10
etc
> Sent
> 1001 - January 10
> 1002 - February 10
etc
Now, post crash ALL the mail in both my inbox and sent items (about 3 weeks worth) is gone as well as all the subfolders for each.
I looked in my drive folders (Data >> Profile >> Mail >> pop.xxx.com and there is NOTHING in there..
Now, what I find strange is my Thumbdrive is still saying that I have 6.59Gb of used space (same as before the crash), which I can only assume means the folders are there somewhere (no??)
I have run a checkdisk - nothing.
I have tried using a USB file recovery software tool and after 28 hours of running it gave up and crashed
I have copied the entire Thunderbird folder to another thumbdrive but was surprised (maybe not) that only 505mb transferred, which makes me assume the folders aren't trapped in the Thunderbird folder but some kind of trash file - no?
So, where are they?
PLEASE can someone assist with this, as I stand to receive a real kicking from the boss if I tell him that I have lost everything from this year.
As an aside, I DO have a back up of sorts, but I haven't updated it for about 3 months (isn't that always the case!) which is just a drag and drop of the Thunderbird folder onto an old HDD... would that help in the recovery or can I use something from that copy to recover everything?
Your assistance in the matter would probably save my job!
Paul
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Since you were using POP3 with Thunderbird, can't you just redownload them?
but alas no, the server copies were deleted on download...
This could be just a corruption on the indexes when it crashed. In which case the mails are still in the folders. If you browse into the Data\profile folder and then into mail, you should see all the folders there. Deleting all the .msf files will delete the indexes and cause TB to reindex them. But BACK UP the profile folder before doing this.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thanks John, that is exactly what I was hoping, but there is nothing in there apart from the standard summary (even if I expand to show hidden folders)
Right clicking the Thunderbird folder as whole (as with all the other application folders) it says that it is only 506Mb in size.
Adding up the folders for the other apps and My Documents it says I have just over 2Gb used, where as the Thumbdrive itself is saying that over 6.5Gb is used so as far as I can see Thunderbird has lost the folders, but the Thumbdrive still has them somewhere.. I'm just not sure where or how to get them back!
In that case you have corruption of the drive itself, which is a bigger issue. You should probably stop writing to the drive immediately and try using a file recovery tool on the drive. Nothing that ships with Windows can help. I can't recommend one offhand, unfortunately. But there are probably file fragments and the like there somewhere.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
thanks John, that was my biggest fear.
Like I said above I tried a recovery tool and that seemed to be getting somewhere near the kind of volume I am looking for, but it crashed after 24hours..
Will try again!
Thanks anyway...