A bunch of my files have been converted to .dcm and not by me and now I need them

[nbthor]

I wish I knew when this happened. I added a DNS 323 network drive back in April, and interestingly the .dcm extension files all date to the 16th of April. I think it must have something to do with the Memeo software that came with the drive. Is there anyway to get the files out of .dcm and back to what they were? There is so much stuff that I thought I had that would be gone. Getting it back would be nice.

 

[Ididmyc600]

if you know what each file is right click it and choose open with, use the bit that lets you choose from the list and then tick the box that says "always use this program to open the file"

 

[Bobbye]

This "sounds like" the most logical meaning for the .dcm file extension:

From Filex:

Extension: DCM
Program and/or Extension Function [What's This?] Company [What's This?]
My Book Backup Tracking File Western Digital Corporation

The backup software that comes with the Western Digital My Book creates files for keeping track of changes to text-based files.

For example, if you backup a text file named EXAMPLE.TXT, the Western Digital backup software creates an XML-formatted file named EXAMPLE.TXT.DCM. That allows the backup program to determine if EXAMPLE.TXT was changed or not. If it did change, the file is added to an incremental backup, and if it did not change, there is no need to back it up again.

The DNS 323 drive is a S-Link data storage drive. I don't know how Western Digital comes into the picture- I'm not a hardware person.

Are you trying to access and use a backup?

 

[captaincranky]

This jibes with a poster in another thread that claimed WD support said that one of their "My Books could "not be formatted"

You decide if this is relevant; https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic131253.html

 

[nbthor]

Thanks for the help. I panicked when the restored files on my C: drive all had .dcm extensions and I couldn't find originals. I guess I got lost in my file structure when restoring them and restored from the /dcm folder under the memeo backup rather than the c/ or d/ folders. I finally found them and most of my stuff was there. I've slowly been returning files to where they belong after a hard drive failure a few months ago. Too many drives and too many folders that look all the same. Makes deleting scary too. Oh well, I'll try to go more slowly and try not to freak out next time.

 

[Bobbye]

There are several sites available for a search using search string such as file extension .dcm. Using one would probably help you out if you get in a similar fix. One site to skip though is "auditmypc" The others, safe for search are filext.com, fileinfo.com, .liutilities.com and many others.

Understand the file extension will help you decide how to handle that file. It is never a good idea to randomly delete a file because you don't know what it is.