OK, to start I'm absolutely not a tech person but fairly familiarly with the workings overall.
Accidentally deleted a file and, having used CCleaner for a while and knowing Piriform had another product for recovery, I downloaded Recuva. Problem was, when I installed it and used it to recover the file, it turns out that the file I was trying to recover was badly corrupted by the the Recuva install itself, partularly that sectors were overwritten by the Recuva uninstall exe file !
Was there a way to avoid this? Can I install Recuva on a memory stick or run it from a CD rather than on the subject hard drive? Or was this just the worst of luck ?
yup, you could have, indeed should have installed/unzipped recuva onto a drive not then one trying to recover from. I've often stated that this should be written in flaming letters 50 feet tall on the Recuva page.
OK, to start I'm absolutely not a tech person but fairly familiarly with the workings overall.
Accidentally deleted a file and, having used CCleaner for a while and knowing Piriform had another product for recovery, I downloaded Recuva. Problem was, when I installed it and used it to recover the file, it turns out that the file I was trying to recover was badly corrupted by the the Recuva install itself, partularly that sectors were overwritten by the Recuva uninstall exe file !
Was there a way to avoid this? Can I install Recuva on a memory stick or run it from a CD rather than on the subject hard drive? Or was this just the worst of luck ?
If it is very important, there are a few options.
If the file was NOT in the My Documents folder, then if you have system restore on your machine, you possibly can restore back to a date to retrieve it.
If it is a file you can file on the web, you may be able to re-download it.
Do not give up if Recuva cannot recover it. There are different data recovery programs, & some work where others fail.
It is possible that one may be able to recover it that another may not be able to.
Of course, it is also possible that your file is toast, but if you know whether you had 1 copy or multiple on different user profiles for instance...