Freeware For Findntfs

FINDNTFS (available here ) is a rather effective free program to locate and recover NTFS (NT File System, The default method of storing files on Windows 2k/XP) files. It is available in several
versions, including one that will run from a DOS boot, and thus can be used when the Windows OS is not bootable.

FINDNTFS is capable of several things besides finding and
copying lost files, but that is what we will focus on for now.

To use FINDNTFS, boot your system into DOS using a boot disk with the findntfs.exe file on
it.

To obtain a list of NTFS files and directories on the drive you are attempting to recover from, type 'FINDNTFS # 1 1 1 c:\recoverlog.txt files' at the command prompt. The "#" should be replaced with the number of the hard drive you are reading from. If you have only one drive, it will be '1', if there is
more than one drive in the system the physical hard drive with the 'c:' logical drive on it will be '1'.

This command tells The FINDNTFS program to search the entire specified disk for NTFS files, and output the file list to a text file on the C: drive.

Note that you can save the text file under any name on any drive, as long as it has the '.txt' extension. Do not save the log file onto a drive you are trying to recover data from however.

Once saved to another drive you can view the log file, which should look something like this.

If everything went well, you should have a reassuring, if somewhat jumbled list of the available NTFS files on the drive you selected. Search the document for the filenames that are most essential, and then scroll up until you see the directory that they are in.

You will need to do this, since the directory order that FINDNTFS sees will not necessarily be the same as you had before the data was lost. Note down the number of the directory before proceeding on with the next step.