Random Computer Based Question.

[Urban~Ninja]

I thought this was more GD then RWPW discussion, but if im wrong tell me.

Anyways i had a recorded CD that my friends band made on my PC and accidently deleted it and emptied the recycle bin. I was trying to reach 6Gb of HDD room again. Then i realised i needed it because i wanted to make some samples for my friend overseas just to have a listen to.

Now its completely gone or is it?

I heard you can recover files aslong as you dont write over them, but problem is that i downloaded 1 Gig for the new Microsoft Office, basically does that mean it wrote over the HDD infomation that had the 'invisible' files that were deleted.

If anyone is experienced with this tell me.

Thank Yeah.

Also is it true some HDD completely mirror the HDD image?

[Random]

It is indeed sometimes possible to recover files.
A quick google search for "windows restore deleted files" found me this:
http://www.aumha.org/downloads/restoration.exe

I can't try it, as I'm not on windows, but I suggest you download it and give it a go. However, if you deleted the files some time ago, even without the 1GB download it's highly possible that they are gone anyway. Day to day use of a computer will override old files, and even if you recover some of the CD, parts of it may be corrupted.

As far as mirroring hard disks go, some servers - and rarely some home-built desktops - have what is called a RAID array. It's a set of disks, and depending on the setup they are used for different things.
RAID1, or mirroring, is where everything written to one disk is also written to the second - a perfect backup, really - but if you delete something from disk one it'l be deleted from disk two as well anyway.

Overall, then - try out the program I linked to, see if it works, but don't hold your breath.

[Random]

Oh, and this is the page that had a link to that program, plus more information on file recovery:
http://www.aumha.org/a/recover.php

[setrict]

Files are stored in 'chunks' of data. When you delete a file the system marks those chunks as empty, but doesn't clear the actual data.

The more you use the system after deletion, the more likely one or more of those chunks will be used for new data. So if you deleted 6 gigs and then downloaded 1 gig, I'd say you have a good chance of recovering small files. If the deleted files were large, there is a good chance you can recover most of the content, but they will probably have some corruption.

Ontrack.com has a recovery program you can run that will show you exactly what files are possible to recover. It's free to find the files, but you have to pay to recover.


Also is it true some HDD completely mirror the HDD image?

Raid systems do this, using multiple drives. I've also seen some 'single drives' that mirror (they were actually two laptop drives + embedded raid controller in the form of a normal drive). Either system would still fail in your situation though since the mirror is updated instantly your deletions would have happened on the mirror too.

edit: me with the slow post submit, random beat me!

[Random]

Haha, we both said almost exactly the same thing :P

[Urban~Ninja]

Thanks for all the help guys, i got 1 track back that was complete, and a few other parts of others that were a bit scratchy and freezy.

Thanks.

[The Republic]

try system restore to get everything back...

[Plekto]

go get a copy of easy recovery pro. But download it to the second drive - not the original. The trial version will allow you to get back a few files at a time. Its cumbersonme, but free.

Better yet, get a copy on a friend's computer and then bring the CD/floppy with it on it to your computer.

[Jetsetlemming]

try system restore to get everything back...
System restore resets the windows registry to a set point. :rofl: it has nothing to do with file recovery. It almost never works at it's intended purpose, either, and when it does, it restores virii. Microsoft completely scrapped it for Windows Vista.