Help, wife about to remove testicles!!

[BoeingBoy]

Am in big computer pooh with 'she who must be obeyed' as I have sent some altered jpegs into oblivion by accidentally 'updating' some copied pictures that she had worked on in the breifcase.

Updating seems to have deleted all the new altered files and also the originals in the 'my pictures' folders. Luckily have the originals on CD-RW but she spent a whole day on the altered ones.

Can I retrieve them from anywhere?, system restore didn't work, or am I destined to sing soprano as of tommorrow!!

Heeeeeeelp! <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

[spannersatcx]

First get a wife without testicles!!
I don't think you can, without specialist software.

What were you using to manipulate the files, Paintshop pro 7 has some good undo features, but I think once you have saved the changes that's it.

In future it may help to work in layers, as you can then go back later and delete the work on certain layers only, I know it's a bit late now though, it's like backing up once your hard drive fails - too late.

[RW-1]

I hope I have this correctly.

There were jpegs she was working on and saved.

You updated those jpegs, (altering them and saving as the same filenames). Correct?

If that is all you did, the originals should be untouched.

If you saved your updated jpegs you touched as a different filename, then her pics before you updated them, should be there.

However there is no way to return the ones that you altered once saved back to the way she left them if you only re-saved them with the same filename.

Sorry ...

[fobotcso]

<a href="http://www.r-tt.com/" target="_blank">http://www.r-tt.com/</a>

This site has R-Studio that is a serious data recovery program but it costs about £40.

It won't get you back something that has been overwritten with a different file, but the likelihood of that having happened is not great. However, if you saved a changed file with the original file name, bad luck...

Remember that when a file is deleted, the data is left intact; it is only the references to that file in the File Allocation Tables that are changed to mark the file as having been earmarked for deletion.

[bblank]

A longshot here. Some applications have a user option that when enabled automatically creates a backup with the same name but with a backup extension. Look to see if in the original folder there are files that end in *.bup or *.bak. My TeX processor has saved my life many times that way.

It takes a lot of work to overwrite data in such a way that the FBI cannot recover it. The government-recommended procedure for "shredding" sensitive files is to overwrite all bytes with one character, rewrite all bytes with a second character, rewrite all bytes with the first character again, and then rewrite the file with randomly selected characters.

Your files are probably recoverable by a specialist firm but at a far greater price than what it will take to reinsinuate yourself in the good graces of the wife.

Edited to comment on fobotcso's post above, which arrived while I wrote mine. "However, if you saved a changed file with the original file name, bad luck... This is what I assumed had happened. And for the ordinary user I agree. However, if I understand correctly, the overwritten data can still be recovered by extracting the magnetic medium and using specialized equipment. That is why government recommendations call for the four layers of overwriting to truly shred files.

[ 15 January 2002: Message edited by: Brian Blank ]</p>

[fradu]

BoeingBoy

You are not alone in this problem, I too made the mistake of updating my briefcase, and lost a few important word files as a result.
I couldn't find a way of getting them back unfortunately. <img src="frown.gif" border="0">

However one thing I did do after the event was split all my documents from the originals.
(You can do this from the briefcase menu).
This makes the files 'orphans' and will not be 'updated' by the briefcase.

Hope this helps.

[BoeingBoy]

Thanks guy's I will try some of the suggestions but in truth she can always repeat the work as we are not talking a large number of jpegs.

Whilst if the data was vital I would spend the money on the recovery programs the cost of a good curry and a bottle of wine should prove cheaper and far more enjoyable.

I will certainly make sure all files are separated to be orphans in future.

Thanks again, it never fails to amase me that there is such a world of information and help available on this forum.

<img src="smile.gif" border="0">

[FL310]

Guess the advises only pured in because they wanted to save your testicles for obvious reasons.... :) :) :)

[Tosh McCaber]

Don't know if it will help, but my wife has historically retrieved documents accidentally sent to the waste bin in Macintosh, via one of the Norton Utilities. However if you have saved to a revised form of your documents, I would think that yor previous version would be vapurised in revised magnetic dust!