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Orion
10-15-2004, 05:26 PM
I know that your hard drive supposedly never really "deletes" anything, instead only hiding it from you. So my question is pretty simple. Is there any way to access these files easily? It would be nice to go back and find some files that I trashed long ago, so I'm hoping that they are still here somewhere. Anyone have a clue as to if this is possible?
vegeta1215
10-15-2004, 06:25 PM
It's true that many deleted files still remain on your hard drive even after you've "deleted" them, but that's only until they get written over by new files. Chances are you won't be able to recover files from long ago, but only those that you deleted recently.

It's kind of an old article, but here's some more info on the subject: http://www.g4techtv.com/callforhelp/features/5580/Windows_Tip_Get_Back_Deleted_Files.html

Someone called in on The Screen Savers the other day and asked about recovering deleted files, but I can't find the show notes for it - speaking of which, I hate the new G4TechTv site. It's so much harder to search for things than it was with the old TechTV site. Plus the pages have too many damn flash advertisements that slow things down :(
Sylvan_Wizard
10-15-2004, 08:27 PM
Vegeta is correct, files aren't actually wiped when they're deleted. The operating system (ie. Windows) simply marks that space as being free so it may be overwritten. Some files may remain a long time after they've been deleted depending on the amount and type of activity going on in your system. If you save a lot of files, it's likely to have been overwritten. Here are some free tools you can use to try to recover them:
- http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/system/fwdatarecovery.html
I'd recommend Disk Investigator, mainly because I've used it before and seemed pretty good.
AtmaWeapon
10-15-2004, 10:37 PM
If it's been more than a week, I'd be willing to say that your files are gone. If you are using NTFS, they are definitely gone.

However, give Disk Investigator a whirl. It won't work on NTFS, but will on FAT systems.
Sylvan_Wizard
10-16-2004, 02:15 AM
Hrm, might want to try one of the other ones then.
Probably better off to try to find the files again from their original source if you can.