System Restore and Data File Recovery

[Guest]

I am running XP SP2 and I have my hard drive partitioned into 4 drives: c:\,
d:\, e:\, and f:\. System Restore is set to monitor all drives. When I open
settings it says it is monitoring all drives.

I installed a new program for backups, which will remain nameless for
reasons of slander. As I was setting up the program to backup certain
directories on my "data" drive ( my e:\ drive), I decided that I was setting
it up wrong and I deleted the directories from what I thought was the backup
set. Instead, the stupid, idiotic program deleted the directories from my
drive, along with other directories in that drive that weren't even included
in the backup set. The miserable program did this with NO WARNING!!! The
files are not in the Recycle Bin, the program just wiped them.

I have never had to use System Restore, so I don't know how it works. I
have a System Restore Point just before I installed this stupid program.
Will System Restore recover all my deleted files in the e:\ drive, or does it
only recover and restore settings in the c:\ (system) drive? Does it only
do settings or will it put back all the files?

Please help, I am tearing out my hair over this.

 

[Rob graham]

Will System Restore recover all my deleted files in the e:\ drive, or does

it
only recover and restore settings in the c:\ (system) drive? Does it
only
do settings or will it put back all the files?

It really only restores the registry, not the program and data files.

Rob Graham

 

[chriske911]

I am running XP SP2 and I have my hard drive partitioned into 4 drives: c:\,

d:\, e:\, and f:\. System Restore is set to monitor all drives. When I open
settings it says it is monitoring all drives.

I installed a new program for backups, which will remain nameless for
reasons of slander. As I was setting up the program to backup certain
directories on my "data" drive ( my e:\ drive), I decided that I was setting
it up wrong and I deleted the directories from what I thought was the backup
set. Instead, the stupid, idiotic program deleted the directories from my
drive, along with other directories in that drive that weren't even included
in the backup set. The miserable program did this with NO WARNING!!! The
files are not in the Recycle Bin, the program just wiped them.

I have never had to use System Restore, so I don't know how it works. I
have a System Restore Point just before I installed this stupid program.
Will System Restore recover all my deleted files in the e:\ drive, or does it
only recover and restore settings in the c:\ (system) drive? Does it only
do settings or will it put back all the files?

Please help, I am tearing out my hair over this.

try any recovery tool
stay clear from writing anything to that partition for now

there are several freeware recovery tools out there
pcinspector filerecovery is one of them

grtz

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

To try and retrieve your deleted files, you would want to use an undelete
utility. These are commonly available for free, and work on the premise that
the space the file formerly occupied has not been overwritten with new data
yet. Once that has occured, recovery requires more extensive (and expensive)
work with dedicated forensic tools by someone who knows what they are doing.

This one here works quite well for basic file recovery:
http://www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Bert Kinney]

NOT true.

System Restore monitors a core set of system and application files,
archiving the states of these files before system changes are made.
System Restore also saves a snapshot of the registry (note: some
current registry values will persist) and some dynamic system files.
When System Restore detects that the user is not actively using the
computer, it compresses the registry and any file copies made.

Description of System Restore:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/description.html

 

[Guest]

Thanks for everyone's help. I used a few different Recovery porgrams, and
between them I got back nearly all my files; most importantly I got all my
critical files.

Thanks again