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I accidentally deleted an extremely important file

5K views 11 replies 6 participants last post by  koala 
#1 ·
I accidentally deleted an extremely important file. I have tried several recover programs and have been able to locate said file, but it is "overwritten". I recover it, and all I see is binary. Is there any way I can get this file back? It's a text file. Thank you.
 
#4 · (Edited)
I use ftk imager lite running off a usb drive dont install it to the computer it may overwrite freespace sounds like you have already had a lot of disk activity since the profile was erased. Ftk imager will show deleted files with a red x next to them. Its a long shot based on what your reporting.
http://accessdata.com/support/adownloads#FTKImager
 
#6 ·
That is a difficult call for me to make on a forum. The short answer is it depends. What OS version how much free disk space was available how much activity on the disk has happened since the deletion I can go on and on. I do this type of work for a living and sometimes we are just not able to recover files that have been overwritten by other data its just how the hard drives work. text files don't have much internal formatting it may be possible to reconstruct what is left in a hex viewer.

Did you try the FTK imager Lite I suggested ?
 
#9 ·
I have said this many times before and I will say it again:
If a file is important you must have a backup of it. Many people maintain 2 or more copies of important files and store them in different locations. Data can be lost due to hardware failure, malware, accidental or malicious file deletion, etc. You need to be prepared when (not if) something happens. Having a single copy of an important file is asking for trouble.
 
#10 ·
LMiller7, I don't need a lecture in how to backup something when it's already been lost.

This file was accidentally deleted, it was extremely important. I will most likely lose my job over this.

Is there anyway to take the file X that is "overwritten" and decode it's HEX?
 
#11 ·
The main question now is "what do you mean by saying that the file has been "overwritten?"<br/>
If some data has been written over the "body" of the file, the file is gone. None, even a super-pro, can practically recover it. But the question for this case is how did you determine that the file was overwritten. Just to understand how correct your assumption is.
If "overwritten" means that Windows has deleted some information about the file, there are chances to recover it. The article So, what do you have to do to get deleted files back? may help you.
If you already did that with other file recovery programs (which ones?) with no success, we need to know what the file is your are looking for. A MS Outlook file, or another one?
And please understand, we aren't magicians here, we cannot mentally go through space and time, penetrate your computer and understand what happened. We need some more information.
 
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