Severe Lost Data - File recovery help please!

[SmartGuyEh]

I am working on recovery some file folders for a person who "accidentally" deleted them (how one accidentally deletes something still is unclear). He transferred the folders somehow to the deleted items folder (in outlook express 6) and then clicked empty deleted items. THe folders were part of his local folders directory tree in outlook express.

As far as I know the way outlook stores this on the disk is by creating a .DBX file. In fact I have confirmed that these .dbx files did exist by checking the "folders.dbx" file which OE uses to list those .dbx files that it should import into its local file structure. The deleted folders are still listed in "folders.dbx" but are not available elsewhere.

Since I know when windows "deletes" something it doesn't really delete it -- it actually just marks the space available for writing, I tried to run PCInspector (a deleted file recovery program), but this failed to turn up the missing .dbx files.

Does anyone know how I can recover them. I am certain it must be possible because the files probably haven't been written over, but I don't know why my file sweep didnt turn them up.

Can anyone point me to some quality information on hard drive data recovery.

Thanks.

 

[BeenThereDoneThat]

SmartGuyEh:

This is a long shot but anytime outlook express has a folder open it creates a temporary copy with the extension of .dbt and then marks that for deletion when it closes. This is in case you have a crash while outlook express is open.

Try running PCInspector and look for deleted files with the .dbt extension. It's worth a shot.

 

[eyec]

you can try Winhex to recover the folder & files within them.

http://www.x-ways.net/winhex/index-m.html