ABOUT
I regularly use PhotoRec to retrieve files from inaccessible file systems for customers, and to make sorting through the rescued files a bit easier I usually organized them by file type (.exe, .pdf, .doc. etc.)Normally I do this with Cygwin and the find command ( find ./ -name *.pdf -exec mv -v {} ./PDF/ ; ) but I end up having to make directories for each file type extension and run the command once for each file type. I started to right a bash script to speed up the process then realized that AuoItv3 would be much more appropriate and put together this script + stand-alone executable.
Created with AutoIt v3.2.12.1
HOW IT WORKS
After PhotoRec does it’s thing you end up with a bunch of numbered folders prefixed with “recup_dir.” and each folder has different file types (unless you only chose to recovery one file type – in that case this utility is not much use to you).
PhotoRec Sorter (this script) is executed from the same directory as the “recup_dir” folders and moves each file into a new folder matching the name of the file extension (in upper case, ex. PDF, DOC, PPT)
So you end up with all the recovered files being sorted into folders by file extension.
USAGE
Platform: Windows (NT/2K/XP/VISTA) (9x Untested)
After downloading the latest version of PhotoRec Sorter…
- Move PhotoRec_Sorter.exe to the directory containing the “recup_dir” folders created by PhotoRec.
- Run PhotoRec_Sorter.exe and pay attention to the console output.
- Once PhotoRec Sorter has finished executing, be sure to look through the “recup_dir” folders for any files that did not get propery sorted.
DOWNLOAD
PhotoRec Sorter v 1.0.0.9 (Current)
Executable + AutoIt v3 Source (.zip)
CHANGELOG
Version 1.0.0.9
- Removes empty “recup_dir” folders after moving files.
Version 1.0.0.8 (Initial release)
- This release has gone through very limited testing, please comment or contact us if you have any appropriate feedback concerning this release.
- Must be executed from the directory containing the “recup_dir” folders created by PhotoRec.
- Moves files created by PhotoRec from “recup_dir” folders into folders by file extension.
- Leaves original “recup_dir” folders behind – will be cleaned up in upcoming version.
- Source .au3 file and compiled stand-alone executable are included in this release.
- Pay Newark Parking Tickets Online
- Burger King Survey
- PhotoRec Sorter
- TAC (Theme Authenticity Checker)
- CyanogenMod: An Operating System Which Can Overtake Android in Coming Years
Other PhotoRec sorting Resources: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/After_Using_PhotoRec
Here are some old comments.
any chance of a linux bin photorec sorter?
samJuly 28, 2012 at 11:46 am
I recommend looking into using the unix “find” command with the ‘exec’ option to accomplish what PhotoRec Sorter does in Linux.
http://unsharptech.com/2008/08/16/useful-find-commands/
JasonApril 19, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Hi team
Any chance in future releases you could consider having a maximum file count per folder and therefor have multiple sub-folders per file type? For instance if photorec retrieves 60 000 jpg files PhotoRec Sorter could create a folder called jpg with a sub-folder called ‘1’ in which the first 2000 files are placed, then a second folder called ‘2’ is created to accept the next 2000 files and so on. I’ve found this helps speeds viewing significantly.
elkhornMay 8, 2009 at 7:45 am
If the “recup_dir.1” folder (or possibly another) is empty, PhotoRec_Sorter.exe dies with a “file doesn’t exist” error. I was able to get around this by moving another recovered file into the “recup_dir.1”.
Other than that, it seems to work as advertised. Good work. It was a life-saver.
EduardMay 12, 2009 at 12:32 am
Thanks for the programm, works fine !!! dit you add the new file extensions from 6.11.3 ?
samJune 26, 2009 at 7:33 am
Thank you! Actually the way the script works it generates the folder names from the files that exist in the “recup_dir” folders so there is no need to maintain a list of possible file extensions.
KrzysztofMay 28, 2009 at 1:21 am
I’m afraid, PhotoRecSorter doesn’t work properly.
It creates a lot of EMPTY folders but doesn’t move/sort ANY files from “recup_dir” folders created by PhotoRec. I don’t understand it… Do You have any sugestion for me, please?
samJune 26, 2009 at 6:56 am
My initial guess is that the script is having trouble accessing the files in order to move them.
Are the file permissions correct?
Is PhotoRec running while you run PhotoRec Sorter?
I’m adding logging to the to-do list to improve debugging issues like this.
Thanks for your feedback, Sam
BrianOctober 9, 2009 at 7:39 pm
I am having the same issue. Folders created, but files not moved. I am using Windows 7.
gJuly 6, 2009 at 8:04 am
wow! this is just magic…all i did was run the sorter where the rec_dir folders are and voila! all the files are sorted…it seems like its a codebreaker though while it was running…lol….thank you guys!..
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SureshMarch 27, 2010 at 11:25 am
Works great…. but in my case it has not recovered the pdf files. It is showing all the files as txt files…
Any suggestion on how to get my pdf files back? Please help as I have lots of data in pdf format…
SureshMarch 28, 2010 at 7:33 am
Here I will describe my problem.
I have an external HDD of 250 GB( Maxtor Basics Portable). It doesn’t have any partitions. It contains around 190 GB data saved from Windows format. and 40 GB free space. Due to the internal HD failure, I had loaded opensuse (linux) in th eremaining free space of 40 GB and booted through it. During opensuse installation it has used 2.0 GB for swap and 20 GB for primary and Linux works well. After installing new Internal HD, I loaded Windows 7 and I connected the external HD and it is showing No data at all. I checked through Disk management, there it showing 22 GB of other file system and 210 GB of unallocated space. First I thought the problem is due to Linux files and then I formatted the 22 GB space( Linux). After Formatting it is showing 22 GB (NTFS. Healthy (Active)) and 210 GB(Healthy, unknown partition). I used PhotoRec to recover the data. I got some data back but not all. I have many pdf files on the hard disk but it didn’t recover any pdf files. Then I used TestDisk to recover the partitions and now it is showing ONE linux swap partition , ONE linux primary partition of large size and ONE HPS-NTFS partition of small size. I tried to recover the HPS-NTFS partition but it showing only System Volume Information. I did’nt get any data.
Please Help me in this regard, How to get my 190 GB windows data back as it contains some important personal information and Some good books.
LouisMay 20, 2010 at 1:22 am
cable-up the drive and right click any and all associated drive letters and perform quick format(s). Then photorec.
beyondokcJune 23, 2010 at 6:22 pm
I love this utility, sorely needed and much appriciated.. a timesaver.
CostaAugust 3, 2010 at 4:18 am
Hi,
I ran your program in the directory where all the recup_dir directories are. It created many directories with the different extensions, but all of them are empty. I gave full privileges/control to the directory and Photorec is not running in the background. I am using windows 7. If there are any solutions please let me know.
Thanks.
OttoAugust 17, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Nice program. Have you considered making this function with other directories and not just things from PhotoRec?
I used Recuva to recover an entire hard drive worth of data and wanted to sort the files. I was able to do this by putting them all (all 200k of them) into a folder named recup_dir but it it would be cool if the program had a way to choose (or you could just explain this in the instructions for people. It works just fine as it is with files recovered by ANY program 🙂
CyroSeptember 5, 2014 at 4:09 pm
Thank you so much for your kind advice I was able to revetrie all the MTS files from my corrupted SD card. One note of advice: never watch any MTS files with SD card on card reader as when the SD card and/or card reader not fast enough the process will easily burn the file structure of the SD card to make it unreadable.
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NickOctober 18, 2010 at 12:03 am
Worked like a charm!! Sorted all 55,000 files recovered from my iphone in one pass! Thanks!!
SROctober 26, 2010 at 10:46 pm
It seems like a great program and very useful … but I am running Mac OS10.6 … will this work from the terminal mode the way I ran PhotoRec? I am guessing not….
samJanuary 27, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Sorry no, PhotoRec Sorter is currently only compatible with Windows.
jose villarroel, January 12, 2011 at 7:45 am
i download both file and i send it to the folder i am using ubuntu 10.04 and i use the terminal i enter the aplicacion phoror…….exe and it said the “file not found” and i use the graic interface i doble click on the icon of photo…exe and i get this answer: Archive: /usr/local/PhotoRec_Sorter.exe
[/usr/local/PhotoRec_Sorter.exe]
End-of-central-directory signature not found. Either this file is not
a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive. In the
latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
the last disk(s) of this archive.
zipinfo: cannot find zipfile directory in one of /usr/local/PhotoRec_Sorter.exe or
/usr/local/PhotoRec_Sorter.exe.zip, and cannot find /usr/local/PhotoRec_Sorter.exe.ZIP, period.
please i am doing someting wrong i wait for your help
samJanuary 27, 2011 at 5:17 pm
PhotoRec Sorter is a Windows executable, it is not directly compatible with any Linux/Unix based operating system. Try it with Wine.
RobertSeptember 5, 2014 at 3:30 pm
Hey Brian,Depending on the File Format, you might want to try copying the file and tntiseg whether simply changing the file type. Otherwise, google file format converter and you should see a bunch of Free services that have various conversion from one file type to another. Other than that, not sure. Anyone out there have any ideas?
geckJune 14, 2011 at 3:48 am
Thank you very much for taking the time to write this, saved me a lot of hassle with sorting 120GB of data
royJuly 2, 2011 at 6:27 am
Thank you for this useful tool!
It sorted one half of ~600000 files, while leaving the other half untouched (for the most part txt files), stating ‘txt directory already exists’, but not moving. A small part of those most likely had names already in use, but renaming randomly didn’t change this behaviour either. Anyway, that’s still 300000 files sorted correctly! =)
dejiSeptember 4, 2011 at 10:18 pm
Did as instructed in your email and all went well as in my files were categorised/grouped into different extensions which made life a lot easy.
Thanks for your assistence and keep up the good work.
TimOctober 11, 2011 at 8:26 am
Is it wrong to say “I love you” in this situation? I had over 3MILLION files to go through and sorter just happily chugged away at them. ThankYouThankYouThankYouThankYou
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JerryFebruary 19, 2012 at 10:50 pm
I used PHOTREC and now I’m going to be trying out photo sorter and its great that is sort over 2000 files but let me ask this question I used photo rec for the first time like a month ago on external HD and it recovered all files which werent many but that all werent named recover and were not named what they were before. They all started with F and then some numbers. Is there something I did wrong or I will have to rename all files like example mp3’s I would have to rename each file. Can you help me out?
TonyMarch 23, 2012 at 9:06 am
Worked like a charm! Thanks for sharing this.
PaoloMay 2, 2012 at 7:41 am
Hello,
I’m in the process of recovering files from a linux based HD with a Mac OSX Lion. Is there a mac version of this program?
Thank You!
Josh ThurstonMay 25, 2012 at 4:48 pm
Re photorec I had help at Free Geek and recovered files all have the same creation date. I can search by ODT or PDF or JPEG but i want to search by the document original creation date in properties when a particular document is open. Can you make a program for that? I have not used your sorter program. I am using Ubuntu 11.04
JoshJune 19, 2012 at 1:15 am
Have Photorec sort by original creation date (not the recovered date) and last version not just with file extension. File extensions save templates and all sort of other crap not created by the user. I also get every version ever created (every time I save the document). I ended up with all sorts of data(crap) I never created. Like 2,596 folder each with 500 items. Can you create something more user friendly?????
samJune 19, 2012 at 9:45 am
The issues you described are completely outside of the scope of PhotoRec Sorter. In fact PhotoRec itself cannot even retrieve the necessary metadata for such sort operations:
When a file is deleted, the meta-information about this file (file name, date/time, size, location of the first data block/cluster, etc.) is lost; e.g., in an ext3/ext4 file system, the names of deleted files are still present, but the location of the first data block is removed.
https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec#How_PhotoRec_works
JoshJune 23, 2012 at 9:53 pm
So if I get your response right the best PhotoRec can do is to sort by file extension?
I misspoke, I meant date last modified and possibly version number. Example in my case all documents modified(saved) after October 11, 2011, of course some where created after that date not just modified.
As these where legal documents some have, exampled: 124 “versions” for the same document. This caused every time a document is saved. I for got to mention I am using Linux Ubuntu 11.04 this does easily allow a search by file extension and creation date. But when the file is recovered by PhotoRec all the files have the creation date as the day they where recovered which I understand is the norm. Maybe your PhotoRec should use the actual date of the recovered file was created?
I am not a geek so I only half understand what you said but it seems to me PhotoRec needs a after recovery sort program that can open each file individually that can be left running over night that opens each file then opens properties of each file records the creation and modified date and time and of course version within. I can do this manually but with 2,596 folders each contains 500 items most of which are just software files and templates it seems like such a useless and time consuming endeavour. I have started this manual sorting through the clumps of data sorted by file extension but I would never recommend your labour intensive software to anybody.
But I still wish to thank you for your efforts to help people with your free software even though I needed help to use it from Free Geek Vancouver through their self help classes