Data Revovery Question

[tweakinn]

hi, a few years ago my father dleted this folder on my desktop full of music game, skins, and a bunch of other files i woudl like to get back, i was wondering if there is a "History" of the names of all the files ive ever deleted so i can get the names of what i need and redownload them.

ty

 

[KASCOM]

you could run symantecs getdataback which will show you what data is available to retrieve

 

[KSoD]

Sorry but you will never get that data back. A hard drive is a lot like a dry erase board. You put information on there, delete it and write over it. Over time the chances of recovering the very first thing you wrote becomes impossible. Since you say this happened a few years ago there will be no chance at all that the areas of the hard drive that held this information were not written to again and the chance of you getting that data back is non-existent any more. When it comes to data being deleted you have to run recovery software instantly to have the best chance to recover it.

 

[tweakinn]

theres not even a list with the names of deleted items? like you would think windows kept a history of this stuff, all i want is the name lol

 

[KASCOM]

LOL i cant believe I missed the bit where it said about the folder being deleted a few years ago, sorry for recomending a program to recover but theres not one that can do that after that long so my bad

 

[Jayce]

theres not even a list with the names of deleted items? like you would think windows kept a history of this stuff, all i want is the name lol

I took some classes on forensics and data recovery and got to mess around with bench lab tests, where we would do whatever we could to nuke data permanently and then try to dig it up using forensic software. I definitely side with Mak on this. When forensic investigators seize a computer, they don't even turn it on - they pull the drive out and run a direct disk (DD) copy of the drive, sector by sector, using a write blocker to ensure the data integrity. Reasoning behind this is just by turning a computer on you are changing data in the system, and they want to have the best chances of recovering any data possible, so they make their backup drive before even hitting that power button.

With it being years ago, I'd bet my car without second guessing you wouldn't find any trace of data. Even if it were months ago (and not years) and it was your grandmother's computer who uses it only to check email twice a week, I'd still be pretty skeptical of finding any data.

 

[KSoD]

theres not even a list with the names of deleted items? like you would think windows kept a history of this stuff, all i want is the name lol

No Windows does not keep this information. You clean out your temp files and other information from time to time, cause Windows prompts you to do it. So why would it keep a list of deleted data? There isnt a need for it, aside from an obscure situation like this. This is that 1 out of a million times that you need something like this but it has never been thought of to be done. Cause all it would do is create another massive file on your system that would grow so big and eat up space over a period of a few years that you would delete it yourself wondering where your space was going to.

If you wanted the names, you should have backed up the data or created a text file of your own with these names and not thought that Windows would be there to fix this for you when all a PC does is what you tell it to do. Nothing more.

 

[tweakinn]

well thanks anyways guys lol, i guess im screwed

 

[Jayce]

well thanks anyways guys lol, i guess im screwed

Hey - lesson learned, right?

Just remember: backups are extremely important... users don't realize how important their stuff is until it's gone. And I'm not necessarily talking about "in case I accidentally delete it"... that hard drive could stop... working... at... any... given... second... Food for thought.

 

[KASCOM]

my rule is always keep a backup of your back