So, in preparation for my son's b-day, I went through all of my folders and moved the best pics of him into a new folder. Once completed, I "moved" the folder to a thumb drive. I then pulled the folder up on the thumb drive, viewed my new folder, then accidently hit the delete button. Since I "moved" the pics, they are no longer in their orginal folders. I checked the "recycle bin" and it was empty. I haved tried searching for the files and nothing. Obviously these are very important pics of my son's first year and I HAVE to find them. What can I do? Thanks for the help. I know that someone knows how...
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"CHARLIE DON'T SURF!!!" -
Re: WAY OFF TOPIC, BUT PLEASE HELP!!!
If the original deleted folder is not in you recycling bin, this program should find it. I have used it with great success
PC World Magazine: Free Hard Disk Utilities -
Re: WAY OFF TOPIC, BUT PLEASE HELP!!!
another thing you can do is to search for one of the file names.. I *think* they will still be on your HD in a temporary folder.. Also, as with above post, if you have not emptied your recycle bin, you can find them there..Originally posted by Matt58
GOOD LUCK, whatever you do, don't write any more files to your HD before doing a recovery, if you have to.. the files will still be there and will only go away if you happen to overwrite them.. So, if you do download a recovery program, download it and run it from a separate drive!
Good Luck again,Wayne Sagar
"Pusher of Electrons"Comment
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Re: WAY OFF TOPIC, BUT PLEASE HELP!!!
I found the Folder that the pics were in, but when I save it and open it, there is nothing in the folder??? Wayne, also, once I realized it happened, I immediately went to the recycle bin and there was nothing there??? I also tried searching for it and there is nothing there as well. I might be SOLLast edited by Matt58; 01-17-2009, 05:47 PM."CHARLIE DON'T SURF!!!"Comment
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Re: WAY OFF TOPIC, BUT PLEASE HELP!!!
The absolute most important thing is to NOT save or move anything from your hard drive at all. This is critical. You CAN recover virtually anything off of a hard drive, as long as it is not physically damaged by fire, water, etc. The issue is, how much is it worth to you? There are various software, programs, etc., that work to varying rates of success. If you want to be absolutely safe, take your hard drive to a data recovery specialist. They will be able to recover it, but it will cost money. I've lost my entire hard drive twice in years past, and I've always been able to recover my data. But, I had to take them to data recovery specialists to do it. One of the HD's had priceless, irreplaceable pictures on it that I could NOT lose. The fee for that service, cost me as much as my computer cost.
Even if you have moved stuff around on your hard drive, you can recover most anything, but now you are talking about very specialized forensics software that must be used. You're now talking about thousands of dollars for the recovery.
I don't have any experience with any of the free stuff, so I can't help you there, sorry.
Good luck, I hope you find a solution that isn't terribly expensive.
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Re: WAY OFF TOPIC, BUT PLEASE HELP!!!
Do a search of your HD... I'm betting that they are still there in a temp folder within "documents and settings".. that is, if you're on XP... I'm not at all sure of Vista's file sructure... that said, first thing I'd do is search for one of the file names...Originally posted by Matt58Wayne Sagar
"Pusher of Electrons"Comment
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Re: WAY OFF TOPIC, BUT PLEASE HELP!!!
Something else to throw in. Is it possible that you could have accidentally renamed one of the files? In Windows, if you accidentally hit the "F2" button above the "2" key, it will wipe out the name of the folder. If you do it fast enough, you might not know it. Just a thought.Originally posted by AAFO_WSagarComment
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Re: WAY OFF TOPIC, BUT PLEASE HELP!!!
Another thing.. have you checked the recycle bin WITH the thumb drive in place? If I'm not mistaken, when you delete files on a drive, windoze actually creates a separate recycled file on the actual drive... worth a try.. Don't dispair, no matter what though, your images are, without a doubt, still on your drive. *Somewhere* as windows does not actually delete files, it only allows the clusters where the files were/are located to be overwritten.. (why I put the warning out about not saving anything to this drive!!)Wayne Sagar
"Pusher of Electrons"Comment
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Re: WAY OFF TOPIC, BUT PLEASE HELP!!!
Try running one of the free data recovery programs on the tumb drive. I've had some luck recovering files from CF cards in the past, basically the same thing. As long as you haven't written over the tumb drive the files should still be there.Comment
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Re: WAY OFF TOPIC, BUT PLEASE HELP!!!
You can recover deleted files as long as you haven't over-written them with new files yet. Windows doesn't erase files when you delete them. It just erases the filename from a list of files it keeps.
There are many file recovery programs, BUT...
if you only have one hard drive, you may want to pull it and place it in another computer as a slave, then install the recovery program on the primary drive, so you don't over-write anything on the original.
Otherwise, if you mave multiple hard drives, install it on the drive that doesn't contain lost files, else you might damage them while trying to save 'em.
--> I HAD TO use a recovery utility some months back when I was re-installing windows and accidentally started placing it on my slave drive instead of the master. I caught it quickly and used a recovery program, but even there I only managed to recover half my stuff. The rest had been corrupted by then, and would not run or open.
Still, half recovered is better than none at all.
This is the tool I used: http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file...htm?language=1
.Last edited by AirDOGGe; 01-18-2009, 12:30 PM.Comment
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Re: WAY OFF TOPIC, BUT PLEASE HELP!!!
Thanks all for the help. I really appreciate all the tips from everyone. One problem (and the only one) is that I did save another file to that thumb drive before I realized what I had done. I tried the file recovery program for the thumb drive, but only the deleted folder is there; the folder itself is empty. Thanks again to everyone!"CHARLIE DON'T SURF!!!"Comment
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Re: WAY OFF TOPIC, BUT PLEASE HELP!!!
Bummer. I've had it happen too many times.
The hard rule I enforce at my company is NEVER either drag and drop or cut and paste. Everything is copied, pasted and the original site deleted AFTER it is verified that the files have moved. It has helped get a handle on lost work.Comment
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Re: WAY OFF TOPIC, BUT PLEASE HELP!!!
have not gotten back to this thread recently... did you save the thumb drive? Other programs might be better able to find the files.. (I'll PM you link to one I've used)... Also, since the files were, originally on your main HD, a recovery program run on that drive might yield something useful...Originally posted by Matt58 View Post
Believe me, I know the feeling, though, my lost files are only of a small segment of my life around air racing.. your's are many levels higher in magnitude of "can't replace!!"...
Whatever you do, don't give up! I still have the drive that was deemed "unrecoverable" and have hope that someday, something will come along that will find those lost electronicly aligned bits of data..
We can store so much more now than we could years ago, and unless we lose it, it's saved in its original state.. no degredation.. Given all the data stored on it, keeping magnetic storage media viable will, probably, become one of the most valuable research projects of the next century.Wayne Sagar
"Pusher of Electrons"Comment
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Re: WAY OFF TOPIC, BUT PLEASE HELP!!!
Thanks Wayne, I appreciate it!!!"CHARLIE DON'T SURF!!!"Comment
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