Deleted AVI file from USB hard drive!! How to get back?

[skurge]

Hello, I have deleted some avi video footage from a digital camcorder from my USB hard drive. What is a good/cheap software that will retrieve my video for me?

 

[crizazykid2]

If deleted from your hard drive: the recylcle bin.

If deleted from you usb: it is gone...you will have to re-transfer from the camera.

 

[CHEEZball]

Never tried it myself, but it might do the trick

clicky!

lemme know how it goes!!

It's for digi cams.. I'm not sure if it'll find a .avi but you never know

 

[Zoron]

Google Bad Copy Pro. I used it to recover deleted pics on flash cards before.

 

[crizazykid2]

that is because it is impossible....once deleted from a flash drive, it cannot come back.

 

[CHEEZball]

says who? there seems to be lots of little programs that promise to recover data off usbs...

 

[skurge]

It is a USB Hard drive. Not a Flash Drive. I have tried a few programs to scan the disk. No have worked that well.

 

[Zoron]

No, it's NOT impossible, because I have done it.

Provided you haven't overwritten that drive with new data, you should be able to recover the file. Use Bad Copy Pro... it works. (Unless, as I have stated, you copied over more files to the drive and overwrote the empty space where the .avi used to sit).

 

[crizazykid2]

hmm....interesting...so it will work as long as the drives contents haven't been altered? Even if you have restarted your computer? What if you are on another computer? The logic does not make sense to me because there is no recycling bin, and the data is erased....what would it read from? (I'm talking about flash drives here).

Sorry about saying it was impossible, as it may not be for a usb hard drive.

 

[CHEEZball]

not trying to be mean hun, but where do you think the data is saved?

In a cloud of blue smoke in a magic pixie container??

 

[crizazykid2]

umm...no.

 

[Zoron]

Someone made shortcuts to all their pics on the flash card and then proceeded to delete all the pics. He said "The shorcuts were smaller".

:roll:

Of course, he didn't realize the shortcut still required the original file to be there. So, I used a flash reader on my comp, fired up Bad Copy Pro and got his pictures back. It works the same as a hard drive... the data is still there when you delete a file... so as long as the empty space hasn't been overwritten with something else... the files are recoverable.

 

[crizazykid2]

I see...so it is "deleted" virtually, but not physically. Makes sense; thanks for the explanation.

 

[4Ryan6]

If this program won't do it, its not going to get done, used it myself and it works just fine!

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

 

[4Ryan6]

When you delete something on a HDD, USB or Internal you're only deleting the link address to the location of the file on the HDD, that tells the HDD that it can write new data over that section, but depending on where its located on the HDD it may or may not be written over immediately.

Now if you have sensitive data on your HDD like for example your credit card number from online purchases you wouldn't want that waiting around on your HDD to be written over.

Programs like Internet Cleaner and Eraser are excellent file shredding programs that immediately overwrite files you may need removed from your computer, these programs shredding capabilities overwrite the files multiple times making it literally impossible to recover the files.

The recovery program I supplied a link to I've recovered files with from a HDD that was accidentally reformated all he will have to do to get his files back is have PC Inspector restore the directory link to his file, if it hasn't been written over and he should be able to go straight to the files on the HDD.

If the link cannot be repaired he will still be able to recover the file, PC Inspector is the best program I've used yet and best of all its free.

 

[crizazykid2]

Thanks for the explanation; I learned something there.