Recovering word doc deleted from recycle bin

Deehjay · 10 Feb 2014 at 17:07

Hi, wasn't sure if this is the right section or not so feel free to move it.

I have a blog post that needs to be done for college work, and I had a separate word document with some of the work in it but I accidentally deleted it thinking that I had the up-to-date version on my USB, turns out that was an older version and I lost something like ~1.5k words, not a lot but still a pain if I have to do it again.
Now I deleted it from my recycle bin a while back, and I was wondering if there's any way I can recover it?
I've tried Pandora Recovery but nothing was found from the recycle bin.

tom_e · 10 Feb 2014 at 17:14

How long ago is a while back? To be honest if you've done anything on the system since you deleted it then it's probably best just to accept it's gone.

Deehjay · 10 Feb 2014 at 17:15

tom_e said:
How long ago is a while back? To be honest if you've done anything on the system since you deleted it then it's probably best just to accept it's gone.

I'm not sure. Maybe 2-3 weeks? It's still on the recent files on Microsoft Word, just obviously can't open it because it's not on my HDD.
What do you mean by done anything on the system? If you mean like recovery of updates or anything then I don't think I have.

tom_e · 10 Feb 2014 at 17:17

After that amount of time there's basically a 0% chance of you not having overwritten the blocks that contained the file and therefore it's gone.
For recovery software to work at it's best there needs to have been nothing written to the drive since you deleted the files as each time you write to the drive there's a chance that the blocks of the HDD containing the file will have been rewritten.

Deehjay · 10 Feb 2014 at 17:18

tom_e said:
After that amount of time there's basically a 0% chance of you not having overwritten the blocks that contained the file and therefore it's gone.
For recovery software to work at it's best there needs to have been nothing written to the drive since you deleted the files as each time you write to the drive there's a chance that the blocks of the HDD containing the file will have been rewritten.

Damn

KIA · 10 Feb 2014 at 17:24

Now would be a good time to backup your data on a regular basis.

http://www.code42.com/crashplan/

Destination · 10 Feb 2014 at 17:38

Try recuva anyway download direct for piriform, install and run it for docs on the drive or more specifically the folder it was originally in, you never know your luck.

Deehjay · 10 Feb 2014 at 17:39

Oh god I found it. Thank god for that. Turns out it was just inside my college work folder (the updated one), whereas the older one was inside the USB folder inside the college folder. Ha.
Will backup data after I finish the work, thanks!!

Caged · 10 Feb 2014 at 17:43

Time to have some sort of system for versions of files. Many cloud storage providers let you revert to a previous version if you overwrite it.

Dropbox/Google Drive for all your important work and a full Backblaze Backup of your disk is the least you should be doing to keep things safe.