I don't know if anyone has any experience with VHD files, but if you do I'd love a second opinion. I have a recovery we just completed, and there were multiple VHD (virtual hard drive) files. The customer stated they needed two of them, so we recovered those, plus everything else in the partition. All of the other data within the partition looked good. Even the first VHD file was able to mount and was viewable without any issues. However, the second one was showing as "invalid" in Disk Management when attached. So not wanting to send back the customer a corrupted file that might not mount, we decided to go the extra step and try to actually recover the VHD file itself.

We have our own tool that we paid to have developed a few years ago for scanning VHD files on a different project, but we rarely run into issues with these files and I'm just looking at other options. I tried SysTools Hyper-V Recovery for VHD files which is built on basically the same engine our software is, and seems to get the same result. We scanned the VHD file, and it regenerated the file structure, folders, file names, etc. etc. So we thought all was good. The directories that the customer specified were there and you could browse through them and see that they contained data. So while the VHD file that we recovered could not mount, the VHD file could be extracted. So the plan was just to extract the VHD, copy all of the data over and then send that back. We did this, and when it was done, we also had Lost/Orphaned files as well which contained quite a bit of data also so we included those.

We went through and opened a few 50MB+ RAR files and some JPG's and docs just to make sure the data was indeed good, and it was. We went ahead and recovered all of the directories, data, and lost data. Prior to this, we were in communication with the customer and they specified they only needed 2 main directories off the root. Both of these directories had quite a bit of data in them. So we sent everything back, and felt good about the effort. Well, we get a call the next day saying that a couple of folders they needed WITHIN the 2 they specified were missing.

It doesn't make sense to me that everything else seems to look good, and ironically the only 2 directories that are missing are the only two they need. Funny, why wouldn't you mention that before. Why say "I only need Folder A and Folder B"...then when those are recovered say "oh yeah, well I needed two folders inside those and they aren't there". I think our manager was considering crediting them, but I just see it as them trying to scam us a bit. Even if they aren't scamming, they are at the very least responsible for being inadequate in their description of what they needed.

So now I'm looking for other opinions on what I might be able to do or use to scan this VHD file, and hopefully find this data if possible. It would be nice to get this completed as opposed to having the customer leave with a bad feeling, or the company having to credit them after doing everything they asked us to do.

Have you seen the options in R-Studio and Deepsar Ops for the file list output?
Not sure if/how it would work with VHD tho.

Maybe a full file list of what you can see to recover before you actually send the stuff back plus a clause with "accepting this constitutes a full recovery and is chargeable".

Whatever you put, there will always be a "loophole" regardless of whether it's a scam or you really have missed files/dirs.


Kern

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Голод не тётка!

you might have some snapshot files that you need to deal with.

I always send a detailed list of the folder tree and ask the customer to CAREFULLY check it, tell what is 'extremely important' that need additional check for integrity and then , after confirmation, for both data is recovered (and must be paid). PERIOD. If something else is needed later it is "extra". The rule, anyway, is no money no data, exactly like in every shop where you pay at checkout.

yep, avoid these issues by sending a file list. Half the time they don't even check it.