Wrote a major portion of my life, moved it to USB, now "corrupt"

Hello, I've been stricken with the idea that years of my writing has been lost, and I'm wondering if anyone can help me. 

I'm unaware of the nature of files, and how they maintain when moved. I have a USB, and enjoy video editing. In order to keep things neat, I moved my writings to my USB while I edited my videos. However, when I tried to open my docx files once I returned them to my laptop, or even attempted to open them from my USB, I was met with a message of

Possibly not, good luck though and work with copies : https://www.thewindowsclub.com/the-file-cannot-be-opened-because-there-are-problems-with-the-contents

https://www.easeus.com/file-recovery/fix-the-file-cannot-be-opened-because-there-are-problems-with-the-contents.html

Edit : Not at all sure about the bottom but is interesting re headers as your files would also use headers. 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/error-message-when-you-use-word-2007-to-try-to-open-a-mail-merge-document-that-was-saved-in-an-earlier-version-of-word-the-office-open-xml-file-cannot-be-opened-because-there-are-problems-with-the-contents-1c91471f-4485-f4b7-3584-59282a49ce80

Old software maybe the issue.

Edit : Windows 7 may also be the problem, would check if can get someone to open it in Win10 or 11.

Edited by Pkshadow, 14 October 2023 - 04:17 AM.

Definitely, as PKS has said, copy all these files into a separate folder and only work with the copies until you have a solution that works. I would suggest that you download Libre Office and see if you can open them with that. And, so long as you are working with copies of these files, it doesn't matter if you click 'Yes'  to the question 'Do you wish to try and recover data ? - Yes / No'.. If this operation goes wrong you can just create another set of copies.

You say 'USB' but don't state if this was a USB thumb drive (aka 'Memory stick') or an external hard drive. External hard drives are more reliable in this regard.

For the future, one copy of anything is not safe whether it be on an external drive or on the internal storage in your computer. The ideal is generally considered to be three copies: one on your computer and two on external and not permanently connected drives, one of which should be stored in a different location. In the case of suffering a ransomware attack or similar a disconnected drive will not be affected.

Best of luck with the recovery.

Chris Cosgrove

I'm also curious to know more about the USB storage device.  Is it a flash drive/memory stick or an external mechanical/SSD drive?

All storage devices have their issues, but flash memory/memory sticks are generally not known for their resilence.

If you're not able to recover the document from the computer you had it on (prior to copying it to the USB device), you may want to enlist a professoinal data recovery company to investigate. I've had good luck with Ontrack Data Recovery in the past.

Another thought: Did you install any new software (e.g. video editing software) before moving your document to the USB device? If a piece of software was infected with ransoware, it's possible such a ransomware may have encrypted your file before you copied it to the USB storage device. This scenario would not necessarily represent a USB storage device failure, but instead a file corruption issue due to the ransomware infection. (Based on the info you've shared thus far, we can't say whether this is the case...but I just wanted to throw it out as another possibilitiy of what might have happened to cause the failure)

Do you have any other documents on the computer you wrote your life history on?  Are you still able to open those documents without any errors?

Whatever you do don't write anymore to your OS drive, this will make it much more easy to recover files.  Don't do anything, I would even pause updates on your browsers and any other software, Windows 7 etc.  Don't download and install anything.  If Shadow Copy don't work I would boot from a recovery tool and get them that way.  If you overwrite them they will be gone forever.

For our knowledge:

What type of drive did you save too as asked by others?  Would please you report the model too?

What program are you using for word processing, Open Office it looks like?

Do you have another computer to assist this process?

How many files in MB or GB is it?  There is some FREE SOFTWARE that will do this quite easily but will only do 1GB for free.  

Edited by pcpunk, 15 October 2023 - 11:49 AM.

Definitely, as PKS has said, copy all these files into a separate folder and only work with the copies until you have a solution that works. I would suggest that you download Libre Office and see if you can open them with that. And, so long as you are working with copies of these files, it doesn't matter if you click 'Yes'  to the question 'Do you wish to try and recover data ? - Yes / No'.. If this operation goes wrong you can just create another set of copies.

 

You say 'USB' but don't state if this was a USB thumb drive (aka 'Memory stick') or an external hard drive. External hard drives are more reliable in this regard.

 

For the future, one copy of anything is not safe whether it be on an external drive or on the internal storage in your computer. The ideal is generally considered to be three copies: one on your computer and two on external and not permanently connected drives, one of which should be stored in a different location. In the case of suffering a ransomware attack or similar a disconnected drive will not be affected.

 

Best of luck with the recovery.

 

Chris Cosgrove

Thank you so much for your reply. I'll @ all those who also replied and answer all the suggestions in one post. 

1. I just tried LibreOffice, and when I attempted to open a copy of one of my docx files it was still in non-letter writing. 

2. It's a small USB drive plug-in that was honestly quite cheap on Amazon

3. Thank you for the advice as far as progressing further if I cannot recover.

@BC Advisor

Possibly not, good luck though and work with copies : https://www.thewindowsclub.com/the-file-cannot-be-opened-because-there-are-problems-with-the-contents

 

https://www.easeus.com/file-recovery/fix-the-file-cannot-be-opened-because-there-are-problems-with-the-contents.html

 

Edit : Not at all sure about the bottom but is interesting re headers as your files would also use headers. 

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/error-message-when-you-use-word-2007-to-try-to-open-a-mail-merge-document-that-was-saved-in-an-earlier-version-of-word-the-office-open-xml-file-cannot-be-opened-because-there-are-problems-with-the-contents-1c91471f-4485-f4b7-3584-59282a49ce80

 

Old software maybe the issue.

 

Edit : Windows 7 may also be the problem, would check if can get someone to open it in Win10 or 11.

Tried your attempts, none of them panned out, although none went according to the exact plan. Thank you for your suggestions.\

Definitely, as PKS has said, copy all these files into a separate folder and only work with the copies until you have a solution that works. I would suggest that you download Libre Office and see if you can open them with that. And, so long as you are working with copies of these files, it doesn't matter if you click 'Yes'  to the question 'Do you wish to try and recover data ? - Yes / No'.. If this operation goes wrong you can just create another set of copies.

 

You say 'USB' but don't state if this was a USB thumb drive (aka 'Memory stick') or an external hard drive. External hard drives are more reliable in this regard.

 

For the future, one copy of anything is not safe whether it be on an external drive or on the internal storage in your computer. The ideal is generally considered to be three copies: one on your computer and two on external and not permanently connected drives, one of which should be stored in a different location. In the case of suffering a ransomware attack or similar a disconnected drive will not be affected.

 

Best of luck with the recovery.

 

Chris Cosgrove

I admittedly have a cheap USB drive from Amazon. I was unaware that swapping files from documents to USB and back to documents just for ease was so detrimental or risky.  I was completely ignorant. 

I'm also curious to know more about the USB storage device.  Is it a flash drive/memory stick or an external mechanical/SSD drive?

 

All storage devices have their issues, but flash memory/memory sticks are generally not known for their resilence.

 

If you're not able to recover the document from the computer you had it on (prior to copying it to the USB device), you may want to enlist a professoinal data recovery company to investigate. I've had good luck with Ontrack Data Recovery in the past.

 

Another thought: Did you install any new software (e.g. video editing software) before moving your document to the USB device? If a piece of software was infected with ransoware, it's possible such a ransomware may have encrypted your file before you copied it to the USB storage device. This scenario would not necessarily represent a USB storage device failure, but instead a file corruption issue due to the ransomware infection. (Based on the info you've shared thus far, we can't say whether this is the case...but I just wanted to throw it out as another possibilitiy of what might have happened to cause the failure)

 

Do you have any other documents on the computer you wrote your life history on?  Are you still able to open those documents without any errors?

1. As I said earlier, it's a cheap Amazon USB

2. I tried to click on some "ontrack" things and it was definitely spam, do you have a specific link?

3. No NEW video editing software, but when I shifted things around it involved some mp4 video files.

4. New office files I can save

Try extracting file from system restore points.

In this video, i will show you the way to restore data using Windows Shadow Copy.

Thank you for the suggestion, I clicked the link and it was with "an error occurred" message

 

Whatever you do don't write anymore to your OS drive, this will make it much more easy to recover files.  Don't do anything, I would even pause updates on your browsers and any other software, Windows 7 etc.  Don't download and install anything.  If Shadow Copy don't work I would boot from a recovery tool and get them that way.  If you overwrite them they will be gone forever.

 

For our knowledge:

 

What type of drive did you save too as asked by others?  Would please you report the model too?

 

What program are you using for word processing, Open Office it looks like?

 

Do you have another computer to assist this process?

 

How many files in MB or GB is it?  There is some FREE SOFTWARE that will do this quite easily but will only do 1GB for free.  

You're asking simple questions that I'm not sure how to anser.

What type of drive? model? Not sure what you mean, I appreciate your assistance trust me.

Not sure what program you're asking about.

I have another Laptop, but it's old and needs updating. 

It's a Micrsoft Word docx from Word 2007. 

It's a Microsoft Word docx from Word 2007. 

Which link output error is the below link?

https://www.shadowexplorer.com/downloads.html

Which link output error is the below link?

 

https://www.shadowexplorer.com/downloads.html

Thanks for the reply! I'm not sure what you're asking.  Should I download this software? It takes me to a site with a bunch of different versions. 

EDIT: I downloaded the latest version, and found the file, and exported it to my desktop.  When I tried to open, the same sequence occurred as previously stated. 

Edited by Decka113, 23 October 2023 - 09:43 PM.

You might, and I say might, be able to recover the files if they are in a shadow point.

Download the portable version of ShadowExplorer on another computer. Save it to a USB flash drive. Attach it to the computer that had your files. Run ShadowExplorer. There is a dropdown list of Shadow Points if available. Read the documentation first.

https://www.shadowexplorer.com/

https://www.shadowexplorer.com/documentation/manual.html