"You should have gone with Carbonite."
Posted on 12/26/2008 12:04:51 AM PST by DaveLoneRanger
I had a document I had written pages and pages of material on. I plugged in a disk to save it, and made the horrible mistake of sending the OLD version over and replacing the NEW version.
I am DESPERATE to get this work back. Does anyone know how to recover an old saved version? I am reasonably certain system restore will not work, that's not what it was designed to do. I have not saved over it in any other way, and I recall some tech geeks telling me it was possible to access old saved versions of a document. Can someone please advise?
Unless you had a Mac with Time Machine or a PC with a similar backup system, you’re SOL unless you want to spend some time with a disk expert ($1000 and up).
You might try something like Norton’s Undelete feature, but I’ve never found that to work.
Whatever you do, do it before January 20th. After that, it’s down the memory hole forever.
Another option would be to see if your word processor has temporary files that it saves to. You can sometimes recover from those.
If you are running Vista, then there is probably a back-up copy. Or, if using XP, it may be retrievable using an un-delete program. If the latter, minimize use of the computer until you can get and run the un-delete program.
Where can I find the temporary copies? Once I found my mistake, I did nothing further...the temp copies should still be there somewhere, but I’ve looked and can’t find them.
I am using Vista. Where do you think the back-up copy is?
May be as simple as recent items ? Or search for files modified on the date in question maybe ??
What version of Vista?
Home premium
Vista’s “Previous Versions” feature (which mostly doesn’t work, but is worth a try): http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2008/05/21/using-vista-previous-versions-to-restore-files-you-thought-you-d-lost.aspx
Word Temp Files: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/211632
How to recover from Word Temp Files: http://www.amset.info/tips/office-recovery.asp
How Time Machine on a Mac works: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html (hint, hint, hint)
Open Windows Explorer
Navigate to the folder where the file you would like to recover resides.
Right Click on the file you would like to recover
Select Properties
Click on the “Previous Versions” tab if there is one
Select the version you would like to restore.
Click Restore. If you select Copy, it will prompt you for a location to restore the file to. This will allow you to retain the original in case you restore an incorrect version.
It's worth a quick try.
None of the Home versions have that. Only Business and Ultimate.
There are ways to get around that, see the links above.
If your version of Vista is Ultimate, Enterprise or Business, then right-click on the file in Explorer, then pick Restore Previous Versions from the menu. Windows will then build a list with previous version you can choose.
Otherwise, the absolutely safest choice is to turn the computer off, take it to a shop (or computer-savvy friend), remove the drive and put it in his computer as non-C: (D:, E:, etc.), then run an un-delete program on his machine without booting your drive.
A less safe way (because further use of your machine could overwrite the lost file), is to google “file recovery”, download a program ( <= $60), then run it and recove the file.
"You should have gone with Carbonite."
“I plugged in a disk to save it, and made the horrible mistake of sending the OLD version over and replacing the NEW version. “
I am far from a computer expert, but do you have autosave set on your computer (you choose it within the application, to save the file every x minutes automatically)? If you had the file on your C: drive before, it may still be there, even if you made the mistake of saving the old version onto the disk you plugged in. I would suggest looking at the place on your C: drive where you saved your earlier version, just in case, also doing a search on your computer for the file name, look under recent files for the application you used, as well as looking at the temporary files, opening each one, because in the temp files they get saved under some weird names.
This may or may not help, but since it’s simple enough to check, I would recommend trying it, just in case.
Otherwise you can look into the more complex solutions recommended by others.
If no simple recovery solution exist, I also suggest you try to recreate the recent pages you wrote, while they are still relatively fresh in your memory.
Good luck!
For future reference, recommend you change the name of the files and use v1, v2, etc, and never overwrite any files, just in case.
I've stashed your links, and many thanks.
No problem. I think you can probably guess what my solution to this particular problem was. :D
If you are using Word, look for the old version autosave temp copies using Windows Explorer. This describes where to look:
http://www.amset.info/tips/office-recovery.asp
Thanks, those tips look helpful, I’ll pursue them in the morning. I’m feeling rather sick about it now...
LOL - yeh, I think that’s the version I have.
Well, switch to another computer or stop using yours until you do. Otherwise, Windows might overwrite it without you knowing.
{from Apple's website}
:D
Right, Dave: there is a very good recovery utility called “Recuva”. It is free, and you can get it from http://www.filehippo.com
Download it, it isn’t very big. Easy to use, just follow the instructions.
If your file is recoverable, Recuva will find it and recover it for you.
Good luck, lemme know how you go.
Depending on the version of Word you are using, Open word, open the file in question, then select the file drop down menu and select versions. A dialog box should open and show you the different saved versions of the file. If it shows more than one, open the earlier versions listed. Word 2003 has this feature.
A quick couple of suggestions.
Do a *.w search of your computer during the past week (or whenever you most recently modified the doc) Especially look for *.wbk files.
Do a *.b search for the same. Especially look for *.bk files.
These will find most Word version backup files.
Look for files close to the size of the file you copied over.
Before you open ANY documents, make a new folder, hold CTRL and drag-and-drop to copy all such files you find.
Then change the prefix on the COPY to .doc and see what happens when you open the docs. Expect your system to hang on some files; you may need to reboot if the file has non-text in it. (Close all other files/programs before starting this project.)
Probably you cannot auto-restore or UNDO anything from such a file, even if you do find it but it’s worth a few minutes to try these approaches.
And, since this happened around Christmas—there is the little joke about how Jesus saves but the devil only makes incremental backups....
Anyway, hope this helps.
Go to some site like download.com and download their trialware if it’s worth it. If you can boot the disk it’s gravy, if you’ve got to attach it as a secondary drive it costs the same:) I had some freebies that I can’t currently locate, don’t worry though, it’s all there :)
I thought that you worked at a unitravesty. You can get the AIDS version (really - it exists) of Ultimate for 65 bucks.
If you could give more information that would help.
Is this a Word file? If so, what version of Word?
IIRC, Word (at least, older versions) can/does save versions of a document within a singular file. If you have the ‘save previous versions’ option set, you should be able to recover.
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You said you saved it to a plugged in drive. Is that a USB flash drive?
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PC or Mac or Linux?
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Windows? What version.
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Help us help you. Give us more info. Otherwise, it is going to be a guessing game.
Time Machine is the greatest.
My daughter has a PC, and would love to have a backup program like my
MAC’s Time Machine.
Maybe this will help:
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#tutorial=leopardtimemachine
I posted a similar link above, but the help is appreciated. :D
Bottom line for me is that the only automated system I’ve ever seen save someone’s butt from a similar mistake was Time Machine. As I said above, Vista’s Shadow Copy service is pretty much worthless in actual use.
Oh my...I need to save this! ;-)
LOL! I honestly had no idea...OK, it’s a challenge. I’ll check the bookstore as soon as they dig it out...
Give it up and learn from your error. The computer did what you instructed it to do. You did not delete a file nor did the computer crash while a file was open. If I understand you correctly, you replaced one file with another; party over.
> If not, using the computer in the least, including installing Recuva, might very well mean he’s lost the file by overwriting certain sectors.
Technically speaking, this is very true. That said, he’d be very unlucky to have Windows overwrite his file, on the assumption that he is running his system with a sensible amount of spare disk capacity. Chances are good that Windows would find somewhere else to download and install RECUVA and, because MS Word files tend to be relatively small his deleted file would probably not be overwritten.
I have used RECUVA to recover very large files on my system using the same process I described on this thread, and had no difficulties with files being overwritten.
If Dave wanted to ameliorate that slight risk somewhat, he could always download Recuva onto a USB drive: I suppose nothing stops him from installing it onto the USB drive as well.
If he wanted to completely ameliorate the risk he could mount his disk as a slave onto another system that already has RECUVA installed on it, and then run it that way. IMO that would be altogether too much bother for the marginal amount of extra safety that would provide.
Just my $0.02: free advice is always worth every cent you pay for it.
I am USING Word 2007. However, the file was running in compatibility mode, as it was initially created with Word 2003.
Yes, I was using a USB flash drive.
PC
Windows Vista Home Premium
Yes, USB drive. The intention was to create a backup of the document. Instead, I inadvertently used the OLD version on the thumb drive to write over the saved version on my computer.
I looked in the temporary files section, and for a moment thought I spied a ray of hope, but it was not what I was looking for.
I. Do not. Give up.
I’d try Recuva, but I phoned a nearby computer repair shop, and they said that they could take a look at it in a couple of days to see. They’re not sure they can recover it, but they’d have to look. I may just wait on doing anything further myself and let them handle it. And try to stay off of here in the meantime. :-(
I wouldn’t be so trusting. I’ve been playing around with Recuva for a few weeks, (mainly with images, for what it’s worth), and have seen a few “test” files corrupted in less than a day, the main culprit being Firefox.
The marginal amount of safety depends on how he views the files. If it was me, I’d disconnect from the network card, turn off the anti-virus, anything with a schedule to it, whatever I could think of that might write to the hard drive in the background, and run Recuva, et al, as soon as.
It’s not so important when saving to a secondary drive, of course, but still....
Dave, since what you want is on a flash drive, it won’t hurt to install Recuva if you’re interested in giving it a look. Enable “deep scan” on all files and make sure to recover anything to another drive. And don’t be disappointed if the program says a file is in excellent shape and it actually isn’t. I’ve seen that program tell me an image is in poor shape or unrecoverable and it turns out it’s fine.
You can contribute to AIDS and Vista in one easy step. That is if they don't get mixed up and send you AIDS and send Vista to Africa.
Next year - Ebola.
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