Recovery from an external HDD

[martinio1]

Hey, I have come into a bit of bother. Basically, I deleted some important documents by mistake (I made a copy of a folder and rather than copying I cut with out realising and seeing how the temp folder I made in now deleted...you know the rest ). I managed to run a recovery program called Recuva and this seemed to recover all of the files, however only half of them are accessible. More importantly is an Microsoft excel file that isn't working properly. The file will open but when it does it's all gibberish. What's worse is that the files didn't appear in the recycle bin either for some reason.

This is how the 2 computers are setup:

Computer 1 - Has the external drive plugged into it directly
Computer 2 - Uses wireless to access the drive.
The files were deleted using computer 2.

Is there anyway I can recover this file? The other files are not as important as we can see the file name so we know what they are, the excel file on the other hand is important. And yes, I know, I should have had it a backed up.

[ppumkin]

Try some other software- and make sure you dont use the hard drive that the files were on any more. Its possible they will get over written most hope is lost

Try
R-Studio - WinHex or RecovermyFiles (there are some more free tools on Hirens Boot CD. Launch it from your windows and go to Recovery under File for more options)
Where they are all demos available - the free recuva is good-- but as you can see not that good.

Take care with all this software and read the instructions and the warnings before doing anything.

Good Luck

[martinio1]

Hey ppumkin, thanks for the reply. I am running another file recovery software, but I fear all is lost as it was only noticed today and deleted yesterday.

I was wondering, will the secondary drive have it's own recycle bin?

[ppumkin]

Yes- the secondary drive has its own hidden folder for recycle bin. You can usually access this folder from a Macintosh or Linux live boot. But if you emptied it then the only way to recover it is using the software - if its NTFS try the software on the hirens disc something NTFSRestore/recover or something- there is also a FAT version,. Its free - it takes very long sometimes.. but it has a nice success rate for software based recovery.

If you still cant manage - I am not too far away.

Good Luck