In JENN had this to say:
My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:
I recently deleted almost all of my music files. Is there any way or maybe
a
free program I can use to get them back. I already cleared my recycle bin.
Thank you
Jennifer
Jennifer,
I'm really sorry to tell you this and I'm going to try to give you some
hope.
When you delete something that you didn't want to delete - the first thing
you have to do is understand how deletion works. When you delete something
it doesn't go anywhere - it just gets marked as "deleted" so that the OS no
longer sees it and so that the OS knows it can then re-use those sectors on
the drive. Until such time as those are covered over the data still exists.
Now that you've made other changes (I'm guessing) such as clearing the
recycle bin, starting your PC, surfing around the internet, posting here,
listening to music, or maybe even starting to replace your music you've
already begun to write over those sectors that are marked as deleted.
In an ideal world you wouldn't have deleted the files. If you had then you'd
have not turned the PC off. You'd have just unplugged it. You would have
removed the HDD and put it into a special device called a bit locker
usually - that prevents any data from being sent to the drive at all. You'd
have then slaved another drive (ideally all the way down to the very same
make, model, and hardware version for internal components) to that and made
an exact replica.
After that you would use a different computer, mount that drive, and would
then recover the files manually or with specialized software.
That still wouldn't have been a perfect world but it would have helped your
chances. Basically, I'm telling you that you can just go ahead and use a
freeware tool at this point and maybe recover some of your music but I have
very little hope for complete recovery and have my doubts that you will
recover much at all. But don't give up hope...
Data Recovery Tools:
http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/system/fwdatarecovery.html
In the future?
Backup! Image/Clone:
http://kgiii.info/windows/all/advanced/image-clone.html
--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/ http://kgiii.info/
"Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its
solution is its own
reward." - Sherlock Holmes
