Retrieving corrupted mesh. Possible?

NightShadow

Okay, here's the situation: my HD crashed quite some time ago. I was able to resurrect the drive and copy everything over, but SOME of the files don't want to open up for me anymore. In particular, I am trying to open up my Starbase 77 mesh. Everytime I try to open the file I get the following message:

File open failed: <name and directory of file>

The size of the file is 18.6 MB. I use 3DS Max 8. I can't import it, can't view it with Deep Exploration or interact with it in any way- the file simply won't open. Now... my question is simple and, therefore, the answer should be simple:

Is it possible to re-open this file or somehow extract the objects within it?

I dearly hope and pray that someone has an answer or solution to this maddening problem.

solarie

Sorry pal I’m Farley sure you’re mesh is out of rescue, files that is/have been corrupted to that extend I dear to say is so close to no retrieval that it may be more work to get it up than to re make It.

Guerrilla

You could try merging the mesh piece by piece to a new scene, but if that doens't work, it's not looking too good.

NightShadow

Yeah. Tried that. It's a no-go. C'est la guerre.

ChrisTOPher

my cousin mentioned once awhile back that corrupted files can sometimes be retrieved, but the catch is, you kinda need to be really good with Dos, so unless you can do that you can't.

Mr. Wilde

Just a general idea (and I don't know if it's possible), but I think you'd need to fix corrupted file headers, because those are probably the reason why you can't open the file in the first place. There's got to be a way to fix this.

I was able to recover a Lightwave Object once. Saved an "empty" object with only one point, guessed where the headers could be and copied the data of a corrupted object into that, and then I was able to open it. A similar approach might work with your file, too, but I'm not sure.

If the file is badly corrupted, then it won't work, because whatever is encoded inside (coordinates of points, lights, cameras, etc...) won't make any sense anymore.

Starship

Maybe, these ones can help you:
Autodesk - Autodesk 3ds Max Services & Support - Fixing corrupted scenes, elements (objects, lights, helpers, cameras, etc) in 3ds Max
CD Recovery Toolbox Free Download - Recover files from damaged or corrupted CD, DVD, HD FVD, Blu-Ray disks
How to Recover Damaged Files
recoverdm - recover files/disks with damaged sectors