luminous

Thanks for that explanation. It does go to explain what is going on a little better to me. It seems to be most unfortunate that Windows chooses to work this way. Still, I imagine nobody has ever heard that being said before!! I shall do a little more testing to see how I get on. It is looking good though

I just wanted to test this program out, so I deliberately made and deleted a file just for test purposes. In fact, I made several, and found none I really hope that someone can point me in the correct direction, as it would be most useful to be able to get files back. Windows XP SP2 Single 500Gb SATA HDD that has 2 partitions. File created called test.docx, and a little text written inside. The file was made on the root of D: drive Then deleted Then the recycle bin was emptied. The program was run, D: drive scanned. Loads of files found, none of them test.docx. I tried a few other files, of sizes from 5Kb to 1Gb. None were found. Older stuff I could get to, but was told it was non recoverable. Is there some Windows thing that I am missing. How are these files just going into the void, these should be the most recoverable of all. (I have no wiping programs or other disk utilities running that could screw things up)