Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

recovering deleted data

Nov 30, 2003 1:45PM PST

Hi, I have a dell laptop i bought almost a year ago, running windows xp home. In an attempt to free up space, I recently deleted about 1000 jpeg pictures from my hard drive, didnt save them properly so now i am wondering if there is a way to recover deleted data. I always viewed the pictures through a desktop shortcut to "my pictures". when i attempted to save the pictures to a CDR, i saved the shortcut instead of the actual files. Later after i deleted the pictures and cleared my recycle bin I tried to view the pictures off of the CDR but it only contains the shortcut and not the actual pictures.

Thank you for your help, i would really like these pictures back!

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Re:recovering deleted data
Nov 30, 2003 9:31PM PST

A tough problem is that as soon as you deleted the files, it's possible you continued to use the machine. The now free disk space will soon if not immediately be overwritten and recovery is not going to happen on overwritten files.

Not many are serious enough about this to stop using the machine, remove the hard disk to another machine for recovery with software such as http://www.speedyfinder.com/utils/617/ and many others.

How serious are you about this?

Bob

- Collapse -
Re:recovering deleted data
Dec 1, 2003 4:25AM PST

This free recovery program might be worth trying. It's not perfect and like Bob said, it will depend on how much you've used the machine after deleting the files, but it has helped me in a few situations:

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

Hope this helps.

Grif