How to recover deleted files?

GWC Community GWC Hive Mind
#1

Hi. I need some help with computers.

I am an idiot. I deleted my photos folder, of which holds almost all the photos I have, by accident a week ago, and didn’t realize it til now when I uploaded some new photos to my computer. (i use a pc, os vista.)

I am now running some file recovery programs (recuva, which is still running, pc inspector file recovery - of which I ran, and it recovered a whole bunch of crap, none of them jpg files, and undelete plus, which didn’t find almost anything (not even counting the stuff I was looking for, but not even anything else?) which I found strange.

I’ve chatted with the HP (yes, I have a crappy HP computer) tech support, of who asked me about my recycle bin - of which I said, Yes, I’ve checked my recycle bin, they’re not there. If they were, I wouldn’t need your help! I’m bad with computers. But not that bad. - and told me that the recovery manager (if I restore back to an earlier point in time, say before i deleted the photos on the computer) won’t be able to recover the files either.

Is there anything else (different recovery file programs, free preferably, other methods, anything?) I should be looking into in the hopes of recovering at least partially my photos folder?

The irony is this. I think I accidentally deleted my photos folder when (I thought) I was copying them into my external hard drive for backup.

I am an idiot.

#2

I am going to do some quick research, but there is one really important piece of advice I can give you:

Do not create any new files, do not download anything, do not install anything. The reason for this is how data gets written to hard drives. Without going into great detail the reason you can recover files is because they are not really deleted, where they are on the hard drive simple is flagged as being available to be overwritten.

In the meantime, it would be very helpful to layout out step be step exactly what happened. You said you thought you were copying them onto an external drive. Describe the process and sequence. The more detail you can give the better.

#3

Thanks for listening. Here’s the deal:-

Well, I’m not even sure exactly what happened. What I think happened was this: I probably cut and pasted the files over to what I thought was the external hard drive, but instead I dragged it into the bin. At least, that’s what I think happened. I was dragging a lot of things around at the time, so it is possible that I missed the missing folder then. Anyway I usually empty the bin every day or so, and never check what’s in it before I empty (which I guess now I’ll never do.). I haven’t downloaded or saved anything since I found out, but the sad truth is I only found out last night, and it’s been at least a week since the incident. And a lot of stuff goes through my computer, saving stuff and deleting stuff. So, I have no clue as to if anything could be recovered at this point. But I sure will try anything! It’s like losing half your life in photos, and it sure don’t feel so good.

Anyway just finished scanning using recuva and am in the process of sifting through what is and isn’t recoverable, but things are looking pretty grim.
Are they paid or free programs that might give me a shot? Should I look into giving my computer to a repair shop (like would they have a better way than what’s available online to me)?

Thanks for the help, even though it seems like a pretty lost cause. I appreciate all and any opinions on the matter, that’s for sure.

#4

Here is what I recommend:

Pc Tools

Pc Tools is a great top notch shop. There virus scan in my opinion is far superior to Norton and McAfee.

Download the free version to do the scan, if it finds something that looks good you can then choose to purchase to recover ($30ish bucks).

This is your best bet in my opinion.

#5

If you have another computer that can burn CDs, a system rescue disc might be the best way to go (that way you don’t risk overwriting files.) I’m D/Ling this one, but I’ve yet to try it. It might be pretty technical.

#6

Thanks Pike and Solai!

After running recuva, I’ve recovered a handful of photos, but man, why is it that the computer would keep some extremely old and useless photos yet chomped down immediately and saved over the ones that are more recent (and that I want)? :smiley:

I’m going to check out PC tools and see what files it can recover for me. Thanks again for all your help. I’m definitely a lot calmer now, since I think the ultra important photos, I do have copies elsewhere of, and while the loss is painful, it is not fatal - I think. Of course, I’d still love to recover all of them, if possible.

And Pike, I’d have to read up on that system rescue disc thing, which I’d do after the pctools program; though my impression is that it’ll recover things that are lost through a computer crash, as supposed to some idiot - me - who somehow managed to delete half her life in photos and not realize it til a week later. But anyway, thanks again. GWC hive mind is the best.

#7

I’d caution against downloading ANYTHING. Downloading a file will risk overwriting the files you just deleted. My recommendation is to go to another computer and download the standalone version of Undelete Plus, then either save it to a USB flash drive or burn it to a CD-R and bring it to your computer. Run the .exe file directly off of the USB drive (or CD-R), and it will show you a list of recently deleted files. You should (hopefully) see the files you need there.

#8

I am sure you have probably done a complete search of your hard drives. If not it could have just been moved into a separate folder or hard drive location.

If it was deleted, the recovery program I have had the best luck with is Active File Recovery. They have a trial version that you can try. It will only recover up to 64 kb files in that version but if it find them you can always buy the full version. It is under 5 mb so there should be minimal risk to overwriting your photos. Good luck! :wink:

#9

For recover files and also word files advise try-how to recover word files,tool is free as far as i know,application effectively recover the text information from corrupted Microsoft Word documents and templates,can work with text files of various formats: Microsoft Word documents and templates of various versions (.doc, .docx, .dot, .dotx files) and Rich Text documents (.rtf files),recover information from corrupted Microsoft Word documents and templates located on corrupted media (floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, Zip drives, etc.),Export the recovered information both to Microsoft Word and to a plain text file.compatible with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows XP SP2, Windows 2003, Windows Vista.

#10

[QUOTE=coco;149740]Thanks Pike and Solai!

After running recuva, I’ve recovered a handful of photos, but man, why is it that the computer would keep some extremely old and useless photos yet chomped down immediately and saved over the ones that are more recent (and that I want)? :smiley:

your getting a lot of good advise from Solai and Pike but I have an observation. Uchiha Daisuke, asked if you had done a search of the hard drive using windows search to see if you moved the folder and its contents somewhere else on the drive. I did not see your answer.
the reason I am interested is, if Recuva did see any of the files you are looking for as deleted, they may just be hiding.

go to Start - Search and pick pictures, music or video
then select pictures and click search. it will find all pictures on the hard drive of any format known to windows. (.jpg, .bmp etc…)

Best of luck.

#11

Thank you all! Since the incident and several file recovery programs later (which I did run through using a usb stick, thanks for the tip), I recovered maybe 15% of some of the pics (and a bit more, since some, thankfully, I have found saved elsewhere, and online. Yay for photobucket/flickr!). It’s now more about ‘rebuilding’ and reorganizing, which I’m still doing (esp. the non work ‘casual’ photos like vacation, which - holy crap! - is still a mess, even after all this time)because I get prety lazy about those things. Anyway.

But, interesting point - because that was one of the first things I did (at least, I think I did you’re saying), but at the time, while I could see the search icons, when I click on the icon, the photo gallery thing tells me that it can’t open the picture because it might have been deleted or is in a location that is not available, or something close to that. I still don’t really know what it means, other than they’re probably deleted by now. Why must computers be so cryptic? Any clue?