Undelete Recycle Bin???

[fyip]

Hello.
I've just realized that I'm missing a .xar project and it may have accidently been moved to the recycle bin and deleted (I was backing up and there was a bit of shuffling of files. I still don't understand how this could've happened since I tend to be very careful, but I canNOT find my file anywhere on my computer or backup disc, so the only thing I can think of is when I was backing up and moving things around.)

Is there a way to recover deleted files? I just deleted it today and haven't done much else (work-wise) where it could have been overwritten (on the hard drive - I understand a small portion of the hard drive will still hold the files until it's overwritten).

I have a fix-it registry program, but it won't go anywhere when I try to retreive deleted files. I did find on a forum elsewhere (an old one) that someone was able to recover files via registry keys. HOW DO I DO THIS? I don't know how to use/access/change... registry keys, but would love to have some advice on how to find my file!!!

ANY help at all would be greatly appreciated. I can't believe I may have lost this work ...

[jamesmc]

Do a search on it first to see if you can find it. START>SEARCH

If it's on your computer, search should be able to find it. You can use wild cards like *.xar or whatever the file is. Another example would be myfile.*

You can also right click on the recycle bin on your desktop and click explore to see if it is in there.

There's a freeware utility that may find your file. It will list all deleted files. I use this one and it seems pretty safe.
http://www.aumha.org/a/recover.php

It's called restoration. You can search by extension if you want. You'll see when you open it up. It has a blank box. So you can put in " .xar " minus the quotes ".

Once you find your file it will let you copy it and then just paste it to a folder or desktop.

[AntonyF]

And a key thing is to do as little as possible in terms of disk writing activity, as you may overwrite where the file was before using an recovery utility.

[fyip]

Thank you both for your responses.
I've tried everything mentioned in your post to no avail. After using Unerase and Restoration, my .xar files didn't come up. And as far as I can remember, I've hardly done much work on my computer since - I even saved the recovery files onto a bus drive and away from the c: drive.

Oh well. I was hoping using the registry keys would be a good way, since those don't tend to be overwritten until you delete extraneous resgistries (with a registry fixer) - I think?!

If anyone knows how to tweak registry keys to find deleted files, that would be helpful. Otherwise, I'll take it as a loss and be more careful next time!

Thanks again!

[BlueFlare]

And as far as I can remember, I've hardly done much work on my computer since

Even without saving new files, there's still a risk of files being overwritten, since the operating system continues to write to the swap file, updates and creates temp files, a browser's cache or cookies could have overwritten the file, an updated registry, etc.

[The Alien]

There's a freeware utility that may find your file. It will list all deleted files. I use this one and it seems pretty safe.
http://www.aumha.org/a/recover.php

It's called restoration. You can search by extension if you want. You'll see when you open it up. It has a blank box. So you can put in " .xar " minus the quotes ".

Once you find your file it will let you copy it and then just paste it to a folder or desktop.

I tried that today to recover some files I deleted yesterday. It found files going back to july the 10th I believe, but the files I wiped on the 13th (yesterday) didn't show up
Heh....figures

[fyip]

Yeah, by yesterday, I think I had probably overwritten the files. And my computer had been sticking and running very slowly since my file "disappeared." So I ran my registry fixer and defragmented late yesterday, and I KNOW the files are now gone!

Oh well! Lesson learned - I'm usually great at backing up, but obviously didn't for this project. Thanks again for the tips!