Something or someone had recently deleted 90% of the files on the network. The recovery was done by copying backup files from a Linux based NAS (Baffalo Terastation Pro) back into the win2k8 servers.

After the copy, I have 100++ files that gives the following error:

that is what appears even when accessing as domain\administrator on a windows 7 client machine. I have read information from various places such as this, but they are all looking to delete the file. In my case, I want to recover that file.

Clearly, the file is there on the server because it contributes to file item count and folder size. It is visually there in the folder as well. But when performing any action on it e.g. moving, opening, setting security information, windows reports "specified file not found".

I have tried using the property dialog, cmd prompt takeown and icacls. All give file not found error.

Is there any way I can fix this?

4

7 Answers

It's possible you may be able to access the file from cmd.exe using the 8.3 name.

1. Open up cmd.exe.
2. cd to the location of the file.
3. Type dir /x.
4. Use the 8.3 name (e.g., FILENA~1.txt) to copy or rename the file.

5

I had the same problem when I copied a file from linux to Windows 7. I solved it by changing the file permission on linux as:

sudo chmod 777 filename

and then copied it to Windows 7 and it worked.

1

Was able to bring the server down this weekend and try out some of the suggestions we got so far.

@techie007 We did the chkdisk first, there wasn't any errors then,

We boot into safemode on the server itself and was able to takeownship directly on the affected files and folders. That solved the problem.

Again, i think this is something that should have been in a KB or something than having us to trial and error.

I had issues where the files were offline with conflicts. If you are using offline files try to clear the conflicts

Install UNLOCKER scann the file & delete it with unlocker (lower left corner "No Action")

This is not a rights issue and can most likely be attributed to the UAC protection.

Referring to the UAC off solution listed in this question same question on TechNet,
you could try accessing after turning of UAC but I advice against it.

I had the same error when I accidentally dropped a folder in the WindowsApps directory in the root of the secondary drive. When I tried to access it through command prompt - it would throw Bad data. Also dir /q would show 'three dots' : ... for the owner.

I rebooted the computer into command prompt (Shift + Restart > Command prompt) and was able to access and move the directory out of the protected drive. I was then able to access it normally inside windows.

The error "The requested security information is either unavailable or cannot be displayed" is also shown on a fully patched Windows 10 when your file extension has a space as the last character.

YourFile.pdf_

Where _ is a whitespace.