over-written files

[Beth]

I placed this post in Internet Mail, General and think it
probably better fits here:

After a hard drive crash, I was attempting to retrieve my
old e-mails in Windows XP. (My service tech had placed
all files
recovered into a folder on my newly installed hard
drive.) In one brief STUPID second, I told Windows XP to
REPLACE all mail folders with the same name. Now, of
course, I have lost all my e-mails from the date of my
new hard drive install. Can anyone PLEASE help me?
Thanks in advance!

 

[David H. Lipman]

Unless it can be restored from backup media -- it's gone.

Dave




| I placed this post in Internet Mail, General and think it
| probably better fits here:
|
| After a hard drive crash, I was attempting to retrieve my
| old e-mails in Windows XP. (My service tech had placed
| all files
| recovered into a folder on my newly installed hard
| drive.) In one brief STUPID second, I told Windows XP to
| REPLACE all mail folders with the same name. Now, of
| course, I have lost all my e-mails from the date of my
| new hard drive install. Can anyone PLEASE help me?
| Thanks in advance!
|
|

 

[Don Taylor]

I placed this post in Internet Mail, General and think it
probably better fits here:

After a hard drive crash, I was attempting to retrieve my
old e-mails in Windows XP. (My service tech had placed
all files
recovered into a folder on my newly installed hard
drive.) In one brief STUPID second, I told Windows XP to
REPLACE all mail folders with the same name. Now, of
course, I have lost all my e-mails from the date of my
new hard drive install. Can anyone PLEASE help me?
Thanks in advance!

You might see if anyone around you has a copy of Norton Utilities
that they would use on your computer for a few minutes to see if
they could recover deleted files. (but every minute you use the
computer and the "900 pound gorilla" goes around using the disk
and writing new files it becomes less likely that you can get the
material back.)

Norton utilities doesn't seem to be especially useful to the typical
user, if only because of the user interface and limited documentation
but it might be feasible to recover some of the files for you.

There are other commercial, and a few free, file recovery utilities
but none of them can promise magic. But it wouldn't have been hard
for Windows to have implemented the "Oh My GOD, what did I just do"
recovery scheme that would handle a fair fraction of the problems.

They try to give you this desktop metaphor but you've never had your
office filing cabinet destroy an incredibly valuable letter just
because you wrote a second letter with the same name, and you've
never been able to destroy a whole filing cabinet worth of invaluable
information with a single accidently incorrect button push.