Last week some of my files ended up in the recycle bin and i think it was a result of a Windows update. I would NEVER have put these files in the bin as they are way too important so i think that the update was the main culprit. So, without thinking, i deleted everything in the recycle bin and then to my horror later found out that many files were missing!
Anyhow, i recently downloaded Recuva software and many of the files are deemed 'unrecoverable' as they have been overwritten by other files or something like that. Should i try some more recovery software or is there an alternative method of getting the pre-overwritten files back???
P.S i have tried Pandora Recovery and put the recovered file sonto a USB and then back into the C Drive. Next i tried a system backup and restore to the date of the incident (is this a bad thing to do?) and next i tried the aforementioned Recuva software. I have OCD and these files are basically my life and it's really depressing me right now. Sorry for the sob story, just trying to amplify the urgency of the situation
Let me start by saying the situation as you've presented it does not look very promising. Here's all I have to offer:
If you decide to try these recovery programs, you should stop using your hard drive immediately so you don't overwrite the data you are trying to recover. Slave it to another PC and run the recovery from that PC. Even now you may have permanently lost some of them if you're using that same PC (as seems to be the case from what you said after trying Recuva). If you can't do that (slave to another PC), you run the risk of overwriting the data with every action you do on the PC (but you still may be able to recover more of the files - it's a matter of luck).
http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/system/fwdatarecovery.html(try Recuva ONLY - do not purchase any products that aren’t free – here or in any of the other links – I’m just suggesting the FREE options and have had problems with some of the commercial ones) But I guess you've already tried this one - which is probably the best one - and found many were not recoverable because they had been already overwritten. I assume you recovered the ones that could be recovered. That's likely to the be case with any others, but you can try as many as you want and see if you have any better luck.
Only you can decide if the data is important enough to take the PC to a data recovery expert to recover the files (they will have better programs and equipment to do so than any of us do and than I provided above). Do NOT go to Geek Squad or any of those big store centers - they mostly don't know what they're doing - take it to a data recovery expert. It will cost quite a bit and they usually offer no guarantees - meaning it typically costs the same if they recover everything as it does if they are able to recover nothing. The fact that Recuva says they are overwritten suggests even the experts will not be able to do anything, but it's not my specialty and they may have tools that work even in such cases (though I see it as unlikely but possible - but again I'm not an expert) The decision is yours.
