How to get back old file which has been overwritten

[doopydug]

My mum has just used an Excel file on my computer which contains 6 months work.

Before saving her changes, she scrubbed it completely by mistake and then saved it so now I have a blank Excel file with no contents.

OS is win XP - is there any way to retrieve the old data?

HELP !

 

[Combat squirrel]

Yeah DO NOT turn the computer on while ur figuring it out, the PC may overwrite those sectors on the drive, then get one of many free file recover software that "see's" files on the disk even if the system files have declared the file empty, they work better when less sectors on the drive have been over written.

Rule 1 as well. Always have a back up for sensitive files, iv got RAID1 on ALL drives in my PC and an external drive, as well as mozy.

Think about it

 

[doopydug]

She hasnt actually deleted the file - more "overwritten" it with blank data - do they still work?

I don't think RAID would have sorted that either

 

[edscdk]

you can try pandora recovery but you will need to remove the drive and put it into another machine to have the maximum possibility of success...

however you are probably not going to get everythign back as it was saved as blank and the will probably have overwriten part of the actual file..

 

[Rob7865]

Rule 1 as well. Always have a back up for sensitive files, iv got RAID1 on ALL drives in my PC and an external drive

Arrrrrrrrrrr - RAID is not a backup solution, if you lose/delete/break a file on a RAID Array you still lose the file, only a BACKUP can bring it back

Sorry, just people should not confuse RAID and Backups
Rob
P.S Merry Xmas all

 

[TWiNKLeT0Es]

If you have AutoSave Enabled then you could cross your fingers and look in the Temporary Files:

C:\ Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft

C:\ Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temp