So the mother-in-law somehow deletes a bunch of MP4 files off her tablet. It's a Samsung Galaxy something-or-other. I don't care about it so I don't know.
I tried three recovery programs:
- Recuva
- Undelete360
- Wise Data Recovery
All of them pulled about the same reports and same files. I only attempted JPG recovery with Recuva, though both of the others offered. I also tried Pandora, but it did not appear to support MP4 files.
Of the three, Undelete360 appeared to pull 1 or 2 more workable MP4 files. The rest were identified MP4s, but were corrupt, and not playable on VLC or Media Player.
I then tried the File Repair utility, which claimed there was nothing to repair. Low marks here since it did not repair a single MP4 out of 20 attempts.
After some research I tried the Grau GmbH Video Repair Utility. It worked and repaired all of the MP4 files. Unfortunately the demo only repairs half the file and 99 euro is too expensive for bad holiday videos.
(I know there is a trick to get around this, but honestly I'm too lazy to bother. These were not my files and they were not worth 99 Euros. The 29 Euro option only fixes 5 files.)
Regardless, Grau was the only utility that worked. File Repair did nothing and online converters wanted $49/video for a repair.
So, if you are in a pinch and it's worth 99 Euro, go ahead and buy Grau. Or don't and try the free demo to see if it WILL work, then buy it if it is worth it. It worked for me.
