Overwritten data recovery

[daren33]

I have accidentaly overwritten a data file. Is there a utility or a way to recover the data or revert this system back to yesterday? I am very desperate! Please help!!!

 

[mozingod]

Well, there's two cases where you could restore that file...

1) You made a backup of it a little while ago (and obviously restore it)
2) You haven't written much data to the disk since you deleted the file. When you delete a file, Windows just marks the sectors that the file was using as "available" and writes to it when ever needed, it doesn't actually erase the sector when you delete it. I believe Symantec makes a program to recover files like that.

If your situation doesn't fit either of those... hate to tell ya, but your SOL . Hope this helped some. Darrell Mozingo
MCP (soon MCSA), A+, Network+, i-Net+, MOUS 2000 Master

 

[Jackcipk]

I know RecoverNT can recover deleted files. Not quite sure about recover overwritten files. I would like to know how to do that too. It's not about whether you can do it or not, it's about HOW
OK, Let's Do It !!!
jliu@Cipk.com

 

[daren33]

I've looked into some recovery utilities and it seems they are all for deleted files and not overwritten files. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Daren

 

[jpeachman]

If by "overwritten" you mean that another file now occupies the actual physical sectors on the disk that the file you lost was at, the recovery from a backup is probably your only option. If, however, you mean that another file of the same name has been written to the same folder on the disk, it does NOT necessarily mean that the original version has been physically overwritten. In the latter case, you might rename the newer copy of the file to something else, then use an undelete utility to try to recover the earlier version. Under most circumstances, it's unlikely you'll know if the file has been physically overwritten until you actually try an undelete. It's definitely worth a shot if you have no backup. Good luck!

Joe

 

[daren33]

What utility should I use for the undelete? Here is more specifics on what happened. I restored a backup file into an accounting program. What I didn't realize was the backup was six months old. Thanks for the help. Daren

 

[jpeachman]

There are quite a few tools available for the task, and I don't have first-hand experience doing this under NTFS (I've use Norton Utilities to do this on FAT partitions), but Winternals FileRestore seems to be highly-regarded:

http://www.winternals.com/

Many of these tools have a free demo version that will tell you if they are likely to succeed before you shell out for the working version.

The most important consideration right now is to stop as much disk activity as possible to the drive with the deleted file. Every time something is written to the drive, there is a chance of it overwriting some or all of the data you want to recover, making it irretrievable. Take the system offline, if possible. And don't install any file recovery tools on the drive in question--some will run directly from a floppy disk, or you can install to a different drive or even a network location. Read all documentation before proceeding.

The other question that comes to mind is, why were you restoring from a backup? If it was because of corruption or file problems with the current version, then recovering it might not do you much good anyway!

Joe

 

[access64]

http://www.runtime.org

the program is call disk explorer I once deleted a partition and was able to recover all the information. Don't know if will work for you situation but it is worth a try.