OT Help: Need to recover a deleted file...

MULLINS5

...from about 10 months ago.

I tried "System Restore" and it will not let me go back that far.

Googled it and there seems to be a TON of file recovering software....but not sure if any of it works.

Does anybody here have experience with this?

Thanks in advance.

Griffins

If you're on a mac (or if they make a pc version) Data Rescue II is absolutely amazing. Recovered deleted files from compact flash cards, including images from a year before that had been continually overwritten and reformatted. It was scary what it would recover, and makes you realize just deleting a file and emptying the trash doesn't get rid of anything.

MULLINS5

Thanks, I don't have a MAC but I'm going to check to see if I can find a Windows version.

bking

<< <i>Thanks, I don't have a MAC but I'm going to check to see if I can find a Windows version. >>



Your chances of recovery go down with everything you do on that PC. If it's been a year, and you've run even a single defrag, almost filed your hard drive, or created and deleted dozens of files, save your money and don't buy any recovery software.

scotgreb

Just had a similar experience . . .

I recently moved all of my card scans (about 2,000) to a thumb drive -- long story short, someone in my family either deleted all the files and/or reformatted the thumb drive. All were gone and I was staring at a huge amount of time to recreate.

I researched, as you have, and found a product called BadCopy Pro -- I think the cost was about $40 (for the license - not a one-time shot).

It worked great. The best part is that you can find out if it works before you pay. It will do the restore but not give you access until you pay. It was well worth the $40.

Scott

Forgot to mention a potential issue. It restored the files great but did not restore the file names -- it assigns them a new name. I had to open each file a create a new name.

edited to add info . . .

bking

<< <i>Just had a similar experience . . .

I recently moved all of my card scans (about 2,000) to a thumb drive -- long story short, someone in my family either deleted all the files and/or reformatted the thumb drive. All were gone and I was staring at a huge amount of time to recreate.

I researched, as you have, and found a product called BadCopy Pro -- I think the cost was about $40 (for the license - not a one-time shot).

It worked great. The best part is that you can find out if it works before you pay. It will do the restore but not give you access until you pay. It was well worth the $40.

Scott >>


Yes, there are many very good recover programs, but they all rely on one thing - that the chunks of the disk allocated to the deleted file have not been reused. Windows keeps a pool of chunks on the disk that are available, and picks from this pool to create files. When you delete a file, the data is not deleted; the "chunks" are simply returned to the free pool. Depending on what you do between the time you delete the file and when you attempt to recover it, anywhere from zero to all of the chunks that made up the file could have been reused and therefore overwritten.