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Lost Sent Mail - How to Fix Corrupt TBB file?
 
#1
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My Sent Mail disappeared and the folder count went to "0."

Checking in the file structure, I can see the TBB file is still there.  I have tried to copy the file to another location but it says that it is corrupt and can not be copied.

Do you have any idea why/how the file got corrupt and what I can do to repair? I need my sent messages.

Thanks.
 
 
 
#2
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What do you mean with 'it' says that it's corrupt.
If your explorer says the file's corrupt then it's likely that you suffered a (little) crash. Lots of possible causes. In that case you're probably too late unless you stopped using your computer at once. (And you'll need some specialized software to do any data recovery.)
If TB says it's corrupt then maybe it's possible to save some data.

Have you got a backup?
__________________________________
I'm just a user of The Bat! I don't work for Ritlabs.
 
 
 
#3
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Windows and DOS say the file is corrupt when I try to copy the file.  
Any recommendations on the "specialized software to do any data recovery?"

No, I am not well backed-up for my Sent Mail and unfortunately it's fairly important.
 
 
 
#4
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Google for "data recovery"
I'm not really qualified to give good advice on this topic.
__________________________________
I'm just a user of The Bat! I don't work for Ritlabs.
 
 
 
#5
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So what you are saying is there are no recovery tools with The Bat specifically to repair corrupt TBB files. Is that correct?
 
 
 
#6
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If Windows and DOS say the file is corrupted, then it's outside the scope of The Bat to do anything about it.

I've used "PC File Inspector" which is freeware from Germany, to recover entire disk structures after the partition information had been wiped out. It can locate files even after the disk has been formatted, although its authors don't claim that ability. I've done it, however.

It may not fully recover your file, but it may make it readable enough to let you extract the messages using a hex-capable viewer program together with a text editor. I use the shareware package "V" from http://www.fileviewer.com/ to view the files, and even Notepad will do as the text editor.

Hope this helps!
 
 
 
#7
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Ok - thanks.
Though I guess I'm still not understanding. The only file that is corrupt is that one Bat TBB file. I didn't have any kind of disk crash.  It's jut the one data file for my Sent Emails all of a sudden became unusable.

I would have thought there would be a Repair option. I'm guessing the file "broke" because it got too large or something.  It was working fine and then boom, for no reason I tried to go into my Sent Box and it became empty.
 
 
 
#8
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What does Windows show as the size of the file? If it's showing zero bytes, then the odds are pretty strong that its directory entry got messed up and if this is the case, PC File Inspector may be able to locate the data and let you save it with a different name.

If the size that Windows shows is greater than zero, then "V" may be able to open the file and show you what's there. This may give you some ideas on fixing it, or at the very least can let you refer to the surviving messages.

I use V to read message files from a network drive that does not have The Bat installed, so that I can refer to them while doing database recovery (which has been my primary occupation for the past dozen years or so; drive recovery is a secondary thing with me and I avoid it as much as possible). To read the file, I set V to text mode and word wrapping. The TBB files include attachments, which will look like gibberish, and also have all the header lines, but the message text is there and is pretty easy to spot...
 
 
 
#9
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Thanks for your help, Jim.  

Unfortunately, too late now. The file was showing as being 225,000+ in size so I think everything WAS still there.  I just couldn't copy it do anything with it.

The bad news is that I re-booted and let the chkdsk do its thing and it apparently decided to throw it away. :(

Lesson learned - (AGAIN!) - must close the BAT every night to let it compress and make back-ups of Sent mail as well as Inbox mail.

*sigh
 
 
 
#10
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It still may not be too late, unless you've stored much data on the disk since re-booting. PC File Inspector may be able to find the remains and bring the file back to life.

I know it sounds like I'm on their payroll, but I'm not. I'm just enthusiastic about a tool that does what I had thought would be impossible.

If you try it, note that it will also find gobs of partial files and plain garbage chunks, so you have to examine the things it finds to tell whether they're what you're looking for or not. I was unable to use it to examine a drive that had more than 24 GB of "drive image" data because it was finding things every few dozen bytes. However on a normal disk the real-to-garbage ratio is usually better than 50 percent real, and when you're looking for important data that's an acceptable situation...
 
 
 
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