How can I get back a document I deleted?

pachingerjo · Newbie Joined: 04 Nov 2009 Posts: 1

I deleted a file by mistake. I went to TRASH and retrevied it. But when i try to bring it up all I get is a line of code or something.

As you can tell by my question, I am totally at a loss.

This file is the family history of a family dating back to the 1400's and I don't have the paper file any longer so I'm really in trouble.

pachingerjo

keme · Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 1:13 am Post subject:

Restore from backup. (If you don't do backups, start now, and then read further.)

If the document was on your system disk, do not use that system. Recovery gets harder with every write to the disk, and everything you do can cause a disk write (temporary workspaces, and paging/virtual memory). Extract the disk and connect it as a secondary disk on a different system, or boot from other media (like a linux live CD or a BartPE or similar Windows disk).

Perhaps you deleted a link to the file instead of the actual file, or you created a copy at some point. Search for the file on your hard disk. Using alternate search criteria such as modify date, file size, file content, etc. just might turn up something interesting...

Use specialised recovery tools. Some are expensive, others are free, and others again have free search modules, so you can confirm that recovery is possible before you buy.

Submit to a specialised data recovery company. At a premium price (possibly several times the cost of a new computer) they will be able to recover your data unless you're using a really thorough "secure deletion" addin. As menioned, it will be expensive, and you may need to spend a fair amount of time going through your data after recovery, but your file will be there.