Salvage items deleted from external usb drive?

[lectrocrew]

I accidentally deleted a folder on my external usb drive that had ~250 Gb of movies in it. It's been a while and I've emptied my recycle bin since then.
 Is there any way to get that file back now?
Thanks for any help!
Mike

[Geek-9pm]

First, don't do anything. The files are still there.
Please look over this search.
http://www.computerhope.com/search2.htm?cx=partner-pub-3999293766533555%3Aelr5q296e0z&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=RECOVER%20LOST%20FILES
Please get familiar with the ideas in the first few posts.
Then when you are ready, try this:
http://www.piriform.com/recuva  It is a free program
Bear in mind that neither the forum of myself can take responsibility if it fails.
That is about the best I can do for you.

[lectrocrew]

 Thanks Geek-9pm!
 Recuva worked for recovering the movie files, but now some of the files are not in the same format as original, .avi.
 I'll attach a screen shot of my folder which shows different icons for different files. The files that show as a film icon are listed as .avi and work fine with WMP or VLC player, but the files that are shown with a VLC cone icon are listed as various formats e.g. AC-3, MPEG-4 visual, MPEG-4, and even some as .avi, but they won't play.
 I have the latest WMP and VLC player with codec package but none of the movies with the cone icon will play with either.
 The 3 main files I want to save are the Contact 1 of 3, 2 of 3, and 3 of 3. (shown in the upper left corner of the screen shot attached).
 1 of 3 shows format MPEG-4 visual, while 2 of 3 and 3 of 3 show format AC-3.
What can I do to make these 3 files play?
Thanks again for the help!
Mike

[recovering disk space, attachment deleted by admin]

[Geek-9pm]

VLC can play almost anything. My guess is the recovery program did not get the extension right. But I am not sure about that.
You might try Format Factory ton see if a conversion is possible.

I just don't know what happened.

[lectrocrew]

Form Factory won't work with either of the 3 Contact Movie files I want to save. Error message attached. -  (note 2 of 3 and 3 of 3 show "video size 0x0" in screen shot #1.  All three files show "Error 0x1:incorrect function" in screen shot #2) when I run Form Factory.
 
An idea I may try: When I recovered these files with Recuva, it suggested not to save the files to the original disk location. So ... I only have 95.2 Gb free space on the internal hard drive in this computer. I have a 320 Gb hard drive that used to be in this PC which I'm going to reinstall and then try Recuva restoring from that drive. (I previously used the USB external drive with that 320 GB drive in this pc also). If that doesn't work then I'll free up enough space on that internal drive to save these files to - hence following Recuva's suggestion = "not to save to original disc location".
If that solves the corrupt format problem then I can transfer the healthy files back to my USB external drive.
Does that sound like a good plan going forward from here?
 Thanks again Geek-9pm!
Mike

[recovering disk space, attachment deleted by admin]

[lectrocrew]

well, I've tried and recovered most of the files I wanted and I appreciate your help doing that Geek-9pm. Thanks!
 I paid for all these downloads from a Movie download site that is no longer in business. Next question is where can I download movies such as "Contact" safely & securely for a low price?
 Suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks Geek!
Mike

[Geek-9pm]

Where you can download movies? Good question.
The big Hollywood companies want you to rent - not own movies.
Hutu, Netflix, YouTube and others will stream, but not keep videos.

In fact, Netflix ha  been doing so well, others are putting  pressure on them to try a get a portion of the revenue for other companies. But that is another topic.