Last-Ditch attempt at file recovery

[disasterrisk]

I had an .odt file on a thumbdrive and it (the file, everything else on the drive is fine) got corrupted. When I tried unzipping it, nothing happened except giving me a notepad full of gibberish and a “repaired” text editor full of jack and squat. I assume everything on it is gone forever, but I’m also pretty bad with computers, so I’m hoping maybe someone has a cool stick they can wave around and magically re-instate the actual text.

pantsverseie.odt (32 KB)

(On the off chance you can get any of it back, uh, be warned that not all of it is… safe. To read at work. Sorry and thank you.)

[ajlittoz]

After changing extension to .zip, I get “Possibly truncated or corrupted archive, can’t open”. Using a binary editor, I see that the file ends abruptly in the middle of a thumbnail image at address 07FFF (32k). The file has been truncated (failing USB key?).

Nothing can be done. contents.xml is missing; text has been lost.

[keme1]

I have no solution as such to offer. For your file sample as uploaded, @ajlittoz’ conclusion stands unchallenged.
However, there are a couple of other things worth mentioning:

Do not use removable storage as your workspace.

• The limited space, limited speed (sometimes), limited life (usually) and high risk of inadvertent disconnect makes that kind of work strategy an invitation to disaster.

In this case the space limitation is a likely cause. The abrupt stop at storage block border (exactly 32k file size) suggests this. Note that while saving, most apps need storage space for intermediate data, which often amounts to significantly more than what the finished, saved file occupies.

I recognize that if you want to avoid prying eyes to some of your content (as possibly is the case here), the use of removable storage makes sense. It offers a sense of security, but that security may be false. I do not know how LO utilizes temporary storage, but I suspect that traces may also be left in internal storage on your workstation, from LO use of temporary workspace and/or the OS’ swapping to “virtual RAM”.

All may not be lost (aka. “one more ditch”)

• The data for your document may still exist in “available space” on the drive (cf. the “intermediate data” mentioned above)

Some recovery apps may be able to rebuild the “stray data” into file form again. Also, there are services which will offer such recovery professionally. Not likely, and the services and some of the “pro” tools are not cheap, but if the file content is valuable and cannot be easily rebuilt from scratch, it may be worth a try.

If you have since saved something on the drive, you can safely forget trying this. Some, or all, of the intermediate data will be overwritten. Rebuild will not be possible.