So I accidentally deleted my pictures folder.

[AGiLE-EaGLE1994]

And there were a bunch of .pdn files that were in my drawings folder, many which weren't finished and had a lot of effort poured into them. I recovered some of them with Recuva and all of the ones I recovered said they had no overwritten file clusters and no damage, but some of them only display the Paint.net logo as their thumbnail and give an error upon trying to open them.

I've attached  one here on my dA account: https://sta.sh/01s6s9hshqte

There is no damage to this file but for some reason it will not open. Can anyone help me with this? I'm sure there's SOMEONE here who knows enough about Paint.net to help me, or at least I hope I could talk to the programmers or developers about how I could fix these files. 

The error is here for the Winston's Biker Gang drawing:

Spoiler

Application version: paint.net 4.1.6

System.Xml.XmlException: '.', hexadecimal value 0x00, is an invalid character. Line 1, position 4090.
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exception e)
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseAttributeValueSlow(Int32 curPos, Char quoteChar, NodeData attr)
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseAttributes()
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseElement()
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseElementContent()
   at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadNode(Boolean skipOverWhitespace)
   at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadDocSequence(XmlDocument parentDoc)
   at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(XmlReader reader)
   at System.Xml.XmlDocument.LoadXml(String xml)
   at PaintDotNet.Document.FromStream(Stream stream) in D:\src\pdn\src\Data\Document.cs:line 1402
   at PaintDotNet.FileType.Load(Stream input) in D:\src\pdn\src\Data\FileType.cs:line 496
   at PaintDotNet.Functional.Func.Eval[T1,TRet](Func`2 f, T1 arg1) in D:\src\pdn\src\Base\Functional\Func.cs:line 158

 

And here's an error for another file that I want to recover but don't exactly want to share (It was a fetish drawing that I made as a joke): 

Spoiler

Application version: paint.net 4.1.6

System.Xml.XmlException: '', hexadecimal value 0x06, is an invalid character. Line 1, position 12289.
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exception e)
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseAttributeValueSlow(Int32 curPos, Char quoteChar, NodeData attr)
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseAttributes()
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseElement()
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseElementContent()
   at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadNode(Boolean skipOverWhitespace)
   at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadDocSequence(XmlDocument parentDoc)
   at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(XmlReader reader)
   at System.Xml.XmlDocument.LoadXml(String xml)
   at PaintDotNet.Document.FromStream(Stream stream) in D:\src\pdn\src\Data\Document.cs:line 1402
   at PaintDotNet.FileType.Load(Stream input) in D:\src\pdn\src\Data\FileType.cs:line 496
   at PaintDotNet.Functional.Func.Eval[T1,TRet](Func`2 f, T1 arg1) in D:\src\pdn\src\Base\Functional\Func.cs:line 158

 

Edited June 25, 2019 by AGiLE-EaGLE1994

[HyReZ]

How were the files deleted. If they were sent to the trash bin they can just be restored.

If you used Recuva correctly you recovered your files to and external device and now, you may be able to look in the recycle bin and select restore if the deleted folder resides there.

Edited June 25, 2019 by HyReZ

[AGiLE-EaGLE1994]

It was too big to fit in the recycle bin so it was permanently deleted. And I did restore them to an external device. And I deleted the folder months ago, perhaps half a year ago by now. The files are undamaged, but I opened up a paint.net file in notepad++ once and saw that there was an XML document built into the pdn file, and there was a thumbnail ID which was in base 64, except in the un-openable files, the ending quotation mark and > were missing and I don't know where to put them. I'm convinced that all I need to do is find the right place to put those two characters and then the file will open.

The partition I recovered the files from hasn't been touched since I deleted the files.

Edited June 25, 2019 by AGiLE-EaGLE1994

[Rick Brewster]

There is no damage to this file

Yes there is. Otherwise it would open just fine.

 

When a deleted file is "recovered", it may have holes in it, so to speak. Especially if you deleted it half a year ago as you said. Data from other files was probably written into the various sectors/clusters that the "recovered" file originally laid claim to. Now you have a file that's a random mix of the original data and also data from other parts of the file system.

[AGiLE-EaGLE1994]

Then why did Recuva say that it wasn't damaged?

I just opened it in Notepad++ and the PDN xml header was there but the end of it was missing.

So yes, it does actually appear to be damaged.

And most of the file was just one line and it was all black solid character that said "NUL" on them.

I'm assuming they're null characters or some sort of terminator? I opened a working PDN file with Notepad++ too and the NUL characters are in it as well, but there's far fewer of them and the valid file actually has more than 4 lines. I DO still have the pencil sketch of the drawing (Both of them actually) so I guess I could just remake the line art? I put so much effort into the line art that I made of it though that I'd much rather redo the sketch too.

Basically here's how I deleted my Pictures folder: I was downgrading my computer from Windows 10 to 8.1 (Windows 10 is a trainwreck and I hate it) and I moved all the files from the Win10 partition to the Win8.1 partition and I thought I had one copy of the Pictures folder on each drive, so when I deleted what I thought was just one copy, I clicked yes when it asked me to permanently delete it because I thought I had another copy.

Press F to pay respects.

Here's a screenshot showing the NUL characters I was talking about:

Spoiler

[HyReZ]

I create a folder on the desktop each month to save the projects that I created for that month. Every few days I do an incremental backup of that month's folder onto my storage hard drive. I have learned the hard way to make backups as often as you can, especially when hard drives are so inexpensive.

[AGiLE-EaGLE1994]

I tried hard to fix it, tried to repair it, any way I could.

But I failed.

I will probably do something similar except it would be backups every week, on my 1TB SSD.

[Rick Brewster]

Then why did Recuva say that it wasn't damaged?

No idea, I'm not familiar with Recuva. I'm just relaying my experiences with trying to recover deleted files in the past. They just don't really recover correctly unless you being the process immediately, and even then you're not guaranteed 100%.