restoring file from emptied recycle bin

  • Thread starter Thread starter karen
  • Start date Start date
K

karen

I sent a file to the recycle bin and then emptied ythe recycle bin. Is there
a way to restore it?
 
Salud! Another fan of PC Inspector!

I don't lose files often (till Vista) but three years ago I lost a directory
with about 1900 files in it. Norton protected recycle bin was running on
the computer. With Norton, I was able to recover around 10-11% of the
files. I tried a name brand file recovery program - got back another
10-15%. Then, after hours of searching, stumbled on PC Inspector -that
little gem- and recovered around 98% of the files, all but three or four in
pristine, usable condition.
 
karen said:
I sent a file to the recycle bin and then emptied ythe recycle bin. Is
there
a way to restore it?
Click to expand...
Short answer is no.. Longer is only with real special knowledge



--
Ian

With patience there is always a way.

Please Reply to Newsgroup so all can read.
Requests for assistance by email can not and will be deleted.
 
I sent a file to the recycle bin and then emptied ythe recycle bin. Is there
a way to restore it?
Click to expand...


Maybe. "Deleting" a file doesn't actually delete it; it just marks the
space as available to be used. There are third-party programs that can
sometimes recover deleted files. The problem is that the space used by
the file is likely to become overwritten very quickly, and this makes
the file unrecoverable.

So your chances of successfully recovering this file are decent if you
try recovering it immediately after deleting it, and rapidly go
downhill from there. If you've been using the computer since then (for
example to write this question and read this answer), your chances are
probably very poor by now.

But if the file is important enough, it's worth a try anyway. Stop
using the computer in question immediately, if you haven't done so
already. Download an undelete program (here's one:
http://www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html but there are several
others to choose from; do a Google search) on a friend's computer and
bring it to yours on a floppy to try.

If this fails, your only other recourse is to take the drive to a
professional file recovery company. This kind of service is very
expensive and may or may not work in your case.
 
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