21 Apr 2005 01:24:47 -0700, tim.kearsley@milton-keynes.gov.uk:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm running XP Pro on the machine at home. I have two internal hard
> drives in the box and I use the second drive as a backup for selected
> files from the first. I know this isn't good practice, but it does at
> least provide some protection from media failure. However, it doesn't
> protect againt half-witted users!
>
> Last night I overwrote a Word document with a backup from the second
> drive made three weeks ago, thus losing three weeks of work. Is there
> ANY way that the lost work can be recovered, i.e. any tools out there
> which could at least let me recover some or all of the text I've lost?
>
> Any thoughts would be very welcome.
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Tim Kearsley

Depends on whether the new file was physically written over the other,
or to a differnt location on the hard drive (not the same as path
location). If the latter is the case, you can try a restoration
program. I use a small and neat one [1]. Looks a little old, but it
does the job well and it runs from anywhere without installation, what
I especially like about software. If the file is not yet overwritten
by other data, this program might be able to recover it.

[1] http://www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html
--
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla'
"All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by."
http://www.stud.tu-ilmenau.de/~frst-ii/

Thanks for the reply Frank.

I've also discovered a program called Doc Regenerator which looks
promising and which I will try.

The problem in this sort of scenario is that you don't really want to
fire the computer up until you've attempted recovery in case you
overwrite the orphaned data, but you can't attempt recovery without
doing so - catch 22!

Regards,

Tim.

As far as I know all OSs will write a file to new location before removing the original file entry from the directory list.
You should have a parallel OS on the second drive so you can boot up and repair or restore your main OS.

tim.kearsley@milton-keynes.gov.uk wrote:
>
> Thanks for the reply Frank.
>
> I've also discovered a program called Doc Regenerator which looks
> promising and which I will try.
>
> The problem in this sort of scenario is that you don't really want to
> fire the computer up until you've attempted recovery in case you
> overwrite the orphaned data, but you can't attempt recovery without
> doing so - catch 22!
>
> Regards,
>
> Tim.

--
Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:06:50 GMT, Mike Walsh:

> As far as I know all OSs will write a file to new location before removing the original file entry from the directory list.
> You should have a parallel OS on the second drive so you can boot up and repair or restore your main OS.

This is new to me. And if they were doing it that way, it'll take
minutes to just delete one 700MB movie. And in case you mean they move
the file to another logical location; that doesn't matter because
recovery programs can look through vacant sectors on the HDD.
--
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla'
"All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by."
http://www.stud.tu-ilmenau.de/~frst-ii/

This does not apply to a simple file removal. The original file is not moved.
When replacing a file with another file the sequence is; write new file, remove old file, rename new file with old name. When this is done the oldfile data is still present, but the directory entry is gone.

Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
>
> Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:06:50 GMT, Mike Walsh:
>
> > As far as I know all OSs will write a file to new location before removing the original file entry from the directory list.
> > You should have a parallel OS on the second drive so you can boot up and repair or restore your main OS.
>
> This is new to me. And if they were doing it that way, it'll take
> minutes to just delete one 700MB movie. And in case you mean they move
> the file to another logical location; that doesn't matter because
> recovery programs can look through vacant sectors on the HDD.
> --
> Gruß | Greetings | Qapla'
> "All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by."
> http://www.stud.tu-ilmenau.de/~frst-ii/

--
Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 14:42:53 GMT, Mike Walsh:

> This does not apply to a simple file removal. The original file is not moved.
> When replacing a file with another file the sequence is; write new file,
> remove old file, rename new file with old name. When this is done the
> old file data is still present, but the directory entry is gone.

I see. But still, this is something else than just deleting.

Btw: you are using Mozilla, yet somehow you post your quote below your
message %-|
--
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla'
"All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by."
http://www.stud.tu-ilmenau.de/~frst-ii/