Recovering an over-written file?

[nsmith17]

Hi,

 

Recently I was continuing work on a word document I had previously started. The previous save was on both my hard drive and a usb key. When I saved my newest work, I went to back it up on my usb, but instead of copying from my hard drive to my usb, I accidentally copied from my usb to my hard drive, which just saved over everything I had just written, putting me back where I had been before I started that day.

 

I hope thats not too confusing. Basically I know Recuva can't help me get back deleted files, but can it help me in this case, where I've saved over my work? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Nick

[Augeas]

You can't 'recover' anything that's really been overwritten, but there may be hope. NTFS is quite picky about not losing data, so the copy over to your hard drive may have been a write copy to new space, check OK, change file address to point to new copy, leaving the old (but desired copy) on the disk. Also your editing process may well have saved some copies as it went along.

 

If you haven't installed Recuva then download the portable version to the flash drive and extract and run it, scanning the hard drive. If you find anything of the same name and date, recover it to the flash drive and look at it. This would be the best scenario.

 

Second best scenario (i.e. first sc.. failed) is to do a Recuva deep scan. This will take far longer and return far more files, which can of course be sorted by filename.

 

Worst scenario (i.e. 1 and 2 failed) is that your pc use has already overwritten any copies you had, or might have had. Redo your work.

 

It depends what you mean by recently. If it doesn't mean 'a few hours ago' (it usually doesn't) and you've been using your pc, as is most likely, then chances are slim.

[mr don]

Hi,

 

Recently I was continuing work on a word document I had previously started. The previous save was on both my hard drive and a usb key. When I saved my newest work, I went to back it up on my usb, but instead of copying from my hard drive to my usb, I accidentally copied from my usb to my hard drive, which just saved over everything I had just written, putting me back where I had been before I started that day.

 

I hope thats not too confusing. Basically I know Recuva can't help me get back deleted files, but can it help me in this case, where I've saved over my work? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Nick

 

Backup your work, then run System Restore to the date you know it was there. It may not work for things in the My Documents folder as these are excluded from restore points as a "safe harbor" for files.

[Davison Warr]

Yes I do agree with Augeas. Actually the system allocates space for data on hard drive once you save it. And when you make changes in that file and save it, the previous space gets allocated to new one . So, technically its may not be possible. You have used Recuva and as far as my experience I have used the Stellar Phoenix Windows Data recovery software, there also its mentioned that the overwritten data is not recoverable.

 

sorry dear

[marmite]

Backup your work, then run System Restore to the date you know it was there. It may not work for things in the My Documents folder as these are excluded from restore points as a "safe harbor" for files.

System Restore is used to revert system state, not data. So as you allude to, this will not work for these data files. What it potentially will do is undo changes that the user has made to their system that they may actually want. Since we know the data won't be retrieved, at best there will be no advantage to doing this. At worst, elements of system and application state would be lost.

 

So I would advise against running System Restore.