HELP!

Spacemad · #1 (**permalink**) 17-November-2004, 09:27 AM

Hi, everyone.

I like to ask somebody if they can help me recover my music collection which I've accidentally deleted!

It all began when I wanted to copy all the pictures from the My Pictures folder to a CD. I've done it before so I didn't expect problems. My burning software informed me that the names of a lot of my pictures were too long so I went back to My Pictures, copied them to another folder on the C:/ drive, then burned them to the CD without any more problems. The problems began when I went back to the folder where I had copied the pictures to to delete them - I deleted EVERYTHING in the folder - including all my music files which, at that moment, I thought were copies of the originals - not the originals themselves, as turned out to be the case! (I had moved them from the My Music folder long ago).

As there wasn´t sufficient capacity in the Bin I got a message asking me if I wanted to delete them permanently from my computer to which I responded yes - thinking everything was just a copy & that the originals were elsewhere!

I only realised what I had done when the music I was listening to at the time stopped playing & I got a message saying "the following items could not be played as they couldn´t be found"! All the alarm bells stared jangling & I went to the WM Player to check & all, or at least most, of my playlists had disappeared! :angry:

I managed to recover some from the Recycle Bin but there are still various GB of music AWL!

I did a search today, using the Search facility of Windows, it turned up the files from one of the groups who files I had accidentally deleted but it won´t allow me to restore them to their original location nor will it let me copy or move them to another place. I tried playing one of the files & it works perfectly, so they are still there but I can´t get at them!

I haven´t saved anything new to the HD since I deleted the music files so they haven´t been overwritten - yet!

Can anybody help me?

Spacemad · #2 (**permalink**) 18-November-2004, 12:46 PM

Can't anybody on the forum help me? There must be somebody out there who did the same thing as I did but has now recovered their files! Must I resign myself to permanently losing them? :unsure:

Chook · #3 (**permalink**) 18-November-2004, 05:54 PM

Seems like it, mate.

All I know is that "deleting" a file simply replaces the first character of its name to another character - signalling that it may be overwritten.

So, theoretically, if you can search for all files beginning with that character ("$" if I remember correctly from MSDOS days) you should have a list of deleted files.

And to recover the file simply rename it by replacing the first character with its original character.

Dunno if that helps - but all is not lost. You won't make this mistake again! :blink:

Matthew · #4 (**permalink**) 19-November-2004, 06:05 AM

If you need these files back I suggest you stop using your computer immediately! Turn it off and take it to a proffessional data recovery agent. As the more you do the greater the chance a file will be overwritten. As the file still exist on your hard drive, its just that they've been deleted from the listed files and Windows will know use that space to overwrite.

damienpaul · #5 (**permalink**) 21-November-2004, 11:59 AM

Any luck recovering your files Spacemad?

Chook · #6 (**permalink**) 21-November-2004, 09:52 PM

Poor Spacemad downloaded a "File-Recovery" program that recovered his file, alright, but wouldn't let him save them unless he bought the program.

So much for "Trial". <_<

kashi · #7 (**permalink**) 21-November-2004, 10:16 PM

You have backup...right?

Chook · #8 (**permalink**) 22-November-2004, 04:25 AM

Ha Kashi

.
The problem is that we've always backed up everything except that file we just lost.

Fact of life! :huh:

kashi · #9 (**permalink**) 22-November-2004, 05:34 AM

Murphies law....which was recently expressed using mathematics I believe...

damienpaul · #10 (**permalink**) 22-November-2004, 05:54 AM

mathematical Murphy's Law? any links?

Spacemad · #11 (**permalink**) 22-November-2004, 06:40 AM

Thanks to those who have replied to my petition for help. Especially to Chook, who send me the URL of a site where I could have downloaded a facility to help me recover my lost files.

The same day I posted this plea for help I contacted a cousin of ours in Madrid, Spain, who's studying IT. Later that same day he sent me the same URL as Chook sent me a few days later! I ran the programme & it did "what it´s says on the tin"! It detected programmes I didn´t remember deleting as well as things I did delete &, most importantly, it found the music files I had accidentally deleted! But - & here´s the crunch - it wouldn´t let me restore or copy them or do anything with them unless I paid out for the licence key!

If the files had been of vital importance I´d have gladly paid out the money to recover them - but they were only music files that I had spent more than a year downloading from the Internet which I could recover, albeit, with a lot of trouble!

Fortunately I did have a backup of most of the music files. I made a backup CD just before going to Spain in the summer - basically to have them with me so that I could listen to them on a CD player, as the computer we have in Spain doesn´t have a CD player nor an Internet connexion. I thought I had left them in Spain, as I hadn´t seen them since returning, at our son´s flat, but my wife, who was over there last week, couldn´t find my collection of CD´s at our son´s place which prompted me to start this thread asking for help!

Three days later I found the CD´s, in a bag with the photos I had taken with me to Spain! I had obviously put them in the cupboard, where I found them, on returning from Spain! Phew!

So I now have the majority of the music files that I thought I had lost forever!

If I have learnt anything from this episode it is not to say "Yes" when I get a message asking me if I want to permanently delete the files that won´t fit in the Recycle Bin, (there were several GB´s!) - at least until I´ve checked to make sure I have selected the right files! :P

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