Recover .sla files after HD failure

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Zemonster

Hello,
My HD have failed a few days ago. I am recovering a lot of files but I can't see .sla files. I tried with 4 softs but it seems that .sla files are not recovered or not recognize.
So what do you think about that ? The files are lost or they have another extension or anything else ?
I use the lastest version of Scribus (1.5.2) and Windows 8.1
Thnks for your answers.

GarryP

#1
Welcome to the forum Zemonster.

Without being able to see what's happening it's difficult to determine what the problem is but SLA files are just XML. This means that they're just text files, like TXT but with a specific internal structure.

Your recovery software should not - by default - discriminate between SLA files and any other types of files. The recovery software cannot know what different files are for so it shouldn't be "blocking" the recovery of any type of file, SLA or otherwise.

Are you sure your software isn't limiting your recovery options in some way? It might be set to only look for a certain set of file-types, for instance MS Office files. It's worth having a look.

Are you absolutely sure that your SLA files were on the drive you're trying to recover from? It might sound like a stupid question but it's easy enough to forget which drive you're using if you have a multi-drive system.

Are you sure you're trying to recover the files from the correct place on the drive? It's just as easy to forget that you started saving them to a different place a while ago (e.g. "Documents" vs. "My Documents").

I cannot think of any hard drive failure that could have selectively "hit" SLA files in a worse way than any other type of file unless - in some weird circumstance - they all happened to be on the same part of the drive that was physically insulted.

Maybe someone else can think of something I've not covered.

P.S. I've just noticed that this post was put in the wrong forum. A moderator might move it if they notice.

Zemonster

#2
Hello et thank you for your reply.
You are wright about xml extension. Some .xml files come from Scribus. Indeed, I've ever recovered .xml files with Testdrive today. And when I change file's extension (.xml to .sla), I can open them with Scribus.
I've opened pdf files too (more easily to recover), created with Scribus, in order to recover my graphic models. That's run.
Also, I found scribus files with Testdrive by checking .gz and .txt in the options.
So Testdrive can recover Scribus files.

Zemonster

I can recover only somes .sla files but not not all of them.
I don't understand why some documents can't be seen.
Have you got and idea ?
Thanks

GarryP

Sorry, Zemonster but without having physical access to the disk and software there's not much extra help I can give.

The solution, if there is one, could depend on many things, such as:
* why the drive failed (e.g. abrupt power failure vs. software issue, etc.),
* how it failed (e.g. physical injury vs. data corruption, etc.),
* how your recovery software works,
* and so many other things.

This is one of those areas where it is so much easier to be actually sitting in front of the hardware and being able to try various things in quick succession just to get a feel for what the situation is before trying to come up with a plan of action.

I would suggest that you ask around in a more "data-recovery-oriented" forum for more detailed instructions as you will probably get more help elsewhere. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/data-recovery might be a good place to start.