data recovery

[Niode]

Lesson learned. Back up important data. Always. CDrs are cheap and you can automate this process on most (if not all) modern operating systems.

but that WAS the backup! lol!

It's a very strange occurrence. It sits in a spot that won't be found unless it's by someone in the know, ie me, the wife, etc. When I went to check on it the other day, the backup folder was gone, but the data folder was there - although empty.

It's like it selectively deleted the backup folder, the data in the data folder, but not the data folder itself. wtf?

I asked the wife if she went and used it and accidentally deleted it, and of course the answer was no. She's definitely telling the truth, and even if she DID delete it, it should have been found by one of the deep scans I did, y'know?

It's almost as if someone physically replaced the drive with an exact duplicate, but no one knows where it is except for me and the ol' lady. I guess I just need to keep a backup of a backup, ha!

Backups should never be in rewritable media, ever. Way too easy for data to be 'accidentally' deleted. As you have discovered!

[gtmtnbiker]

So what about moved files?

Because I know - I'm absolutely sure- that the 'backup' folder was never overwritten. It was like a zero state file. The fist edition, whatever, it was never overwritten or deleted. well, maybe deleted, but never modified. I always made a copy of that original file to make adjustments, etc.

But at some point, I must have moved it, rather than deleted it - will recovery software find moved files, as opposed to deleted ones?

What do you mean by moved? If it's moved on the same disc, then at the file system level, the data stays the same but the file tree is changed. In other words, the pointer is moved to a different location.

If you move to a different disk, then the old location is deleted and it's at the mercy of the OS to it being reclaimed.

[indecks]

So what about moved files?

Because I know - I'm absolutely sure- that the 'backup' folder was never overwritten. It was like a zero state file. The fist edition, whatever, it was never overwritten or deleted. well, maybe deleted, but never modified. I always made a copy of that original file to make adjustments, etc.

But at some point, I must have moved it, rather than deleted it - will recovery software find moved files, as opposed to deleted ones?

What do you mean by moved? If it's moved on the same disc, then at the file system level, the data stays the same but the file tree is changed. In other words, the pointer is moved to a different location.

If you move to a different disk, then the old location is deleted and it's at the mercy of the OS to it being reclaimed.

Yeah I mean the 2nd one. Moved from a flash drive to a 'real' hdd. Right clicked, dragged, and then clicked 'move', rather than copy. As far as the source drive is concerned, would it be treated the same as deletion?