Deleted files

[Journeyman]

Good day, I may be beyond help with this problem. I have no one to blame other than myself.

On Wed last (6th) I inadvertently deleted almost 500mb of photos. I was cleaning out what I thought were files going to Onedrive. I have an unreasonable, visceral hatred of cloud storage placed by others on my machines. Costly now.

I had backed up on the 4th so saved about 480mb or so. However the files I did lose covered work I had been cataloguing and a fair amount of images from recent trip to Newcastle.

I have Disk Drill free software (now) to look for the files. They did not go to the recycle bin. Does anyone have a suggestion or an idea of where they may be please?

Many thanks Journeyman

[ameerat42]

Hang on... Where did you delete them from? - Which drive on (presumably) your computer?

BUT IN THE meantime, do not write anything more to that drive.

(I'll move your thread to General Help.)

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Also:
Are you running Win 10, perchance?
And what method did you use to delete them?

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Some time later...

JM, where are you...?

So, look at the video on this page (https://www.cleverfiles.com/data-recovery-software.html) (for Windows).

Basically, just scan the whole drive that the files were on.

[Journeyman]

Good day Ameerat,

I deleted the files using the delete the right click on the pop up file explorer menu, Expand, Open with, Delete etc.
The files did not go to the recycle bin. No indication of where they did go.
I am at Upper Coomera, SEQ.
I have used Disk Drill, free version. It does return files on the screen. Most of them indicating unusable

Wanting to think I did not really do this is a constant thought.
Thanks and regards,
JM

[ameerat42]

To cut a long search results story short, have a look at the first few search results from
"recover shift deleted files win 10"

Did you run DD over the whole drive - assuming it was NOT you C drive?

FWIW, I was impressed enough with the claims of Disk Drill to download it and to try it on
some text files.

-- And to make you feel less bad, I lost a heap of pics - about the same amount - from a
non backed-up-yet-:o disk crash.

[Journeyman]

Thanks again kind sir,

I have reached the "life must go on" point. More care and possibly cloud back up.

I have the bulk of my photos and will go to Newcastle again.

Take care old mate, Journeyman

[ameerat42]

Hmm, but it's a bidd'v a piddy. By what process did you delete them?
Even a Shift-Del just marks them as "available writing space" but does not
wipe them totally, and hence the advice of not writing any more to that disk.

[ZiffyC]

I have from time to time used a little program (free) called Recuva, it works a treat but it can be slow going, it tends to recover everything that hasn't been written over.

[Journeyman]

Morning,
I cleared the local Onedrive file using the header of my files. Hover of the title, left click to bring up the menu, left click “delete” and then watched the process.Very standard deleting. What I believed I was doing was to clear the files out of Onedrive’s clutches. Alas not the case.

The positive side effect of this is that I looked into cloud storage a little closer. As I use Word, Excl, Outlook etc. I am already paying for 6TB of storage, 1TB available to me. Onedrive loaded the files overnight.

The files are are automatically grouped by date/image contents (lunar, birds etc.) it seems. I have far too many images of the same thing. My plan is to:
Cull the images (which is what I was doing),
Download the completed results to a 1TB external disk,
Look around for a better storage option, I don’t really need the Microsoft programs these days. I was impressed by the quality of the images.
Of course I did not realise the Cloud was part of the deal.
I have paid the price of my folly, worn my best hair shirt for a couple of days. Onwards I say.

One other surprising note was that I realised that the images from 4 or 5 years back are of a very high standard. Probably more relaxed than I am now.

Thanks Ziffy, I will check out Recuva, it was the completed work plus a 100 or so photos that has upset me.

Thanks and kind regards

[ameerat42]

Here are a number of articles that talk about file deletion/(hopeful) recovery...

The point they consistently make is to start the recovery operation as soon as possible - ie, do not write to the disk
where the file(s) were deleted from.

https://www.stellarinfo.com/blog/how-can-i-recover-permanently-deleted-files-in-windows-10/

https://www.howtogeek.com/169344/how-to-recover-a-deleted-file-the-ultimate-guide/

https://www.techadvisor.com/how-to/software/recover-deleted-files-3365461/

https://4ddig.tenorshare.com/windows-recovery-solutions/how-to-recover-permanently-deleted-files-from-pc.html

...etc...

[Journeyman]

Thank you Ameerat,

I have searched high and low. Using free software and the file explorer search etc. I have found files that have been there since the time of the Magna Carta. Or Federation at least. Plenty of earlier types nothing recent.

I will check out the lines of enquiry that you have kindly sent to me. I hope I have learned something from this at least. I have placed my photos in Onedrive. Don’t understand the on-line only concept. Expect it will grow on me.

Thanks again, your advice is well received, kind regards, JM

[ameerat42]

No worries, JM. I know what data loss is like :(:(:(

I don't know if you have ever discussed backup methods on AP but do you
have some system? Mine is two separate copies on external drives that are
not always connected to the computer. I use 1TB and 2TB Toshiba Canvio
USB3 HDDs. The 2TB is now $68, which was the price of the 1TB not very
long ago :cool: I don't use SSDs for that sort of storage.

I don't use cloud for back-up, just some hosting. OneDrive is one such, but I
hardly use that now because of the absolutely stupid file sharing [lack of any
coherent means] that they went to a few years ago. I could not keep any
permanent link in AP posts to my images hosted there :confused013 Their support
was less than non-existent. I then changed to Flickr - and then only hardly!

Basically, I don't trust any cloud storage for anything serious like backups.

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Additionally: WhatsApp is one recent example. I religiously backed up my
chats (incl attachments) to my Google account, and then... - when I did
need to change phones, do you think I could get it back???!!! - It's not
as if I had not done this 3 or 4 times before :confused013 My small consolation
is that the stuff wasn't essential, but it was a sobering reminder.

[Journeyman]

Hello Ameerat,
My feelings about cloud storage is the same as yours. Pretty much for the same reasons. I have a 1TB and 2 x 500. I was looking for a bigger drive (2TB) could not find one that was a reasonable price. The ultimate price proved to be higher anyway. I had sufficient space in my hands. I have a Toshiba laptop that still works ok, just not enough RAM to run the later editing software.

At the moment I am trying to understand how to recover and copy my files to hard drives.
I have destroyed any faith I had in my electronic capabilities. Considering thatI used to assemble Access data bases including the extended maths as part of my work it is a rude shock to discover what age is harvesting out of my poor old head.

Photography is a great creative pastime. The whole thing I know have needs to be sorted out and so it shall be. Thank you for your help, if you are ever on the Gold Coast I would be happy to repay you with coffee or the drink of choice.

I have come to realise what a great asset AP is. Take care,kind regards JM

[ameerat42]

Do you have an Officeworks nearby? There the Toshiba Canvio 2TB USB3 external drives cost $68.
I typically get 100~130MB/sec writes, but I've noticed that my computer's USB controller seems to
take size of transfer into consideration. A GB of data sometimes goes at ~300 MB/sec, where the
odd few MBytes will amble across at about 20~50 :confused013

One thing I've found is not to use such external drives as work drives permanently attached to the
computer. I once - and only once! - used a WD Passport like that - constantly editing and writing
biggish image files to it. One day it failed :(

(Do Officeworks have a cafe...? :D)

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PS: My oldest Tosh Canvio is from 2013, and I've bought such HDDs about 1 a year since then.
This included the Passport in about 2015, and a few WD Elements. All but the Passport still going,
and a Hard Disk Sentinel health check shows them all still at 100%.

One of the drives acts as a second storage unit on the PVR attached to the TV, having found that
its original 1TB of storage was soon nearly full.

[Journeyman]

May I thank everyone that offered advice.

The hangover from this error was that my confidence was knocked into a cocked hat.
The recovery was very good, I now look very closely at every editing change and storage of the images. No postings on AP as yet although I suitable photos which I will post.

My advice, back up as much as possible in any way that works. Keep one copy on separate storage device or cloud.


Once again, many thanks, Journeyman.