File Recovery -- FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HELP ME THERE'S MUSIC AND PORN AT STAKE
 

So....I just deleted a shitload of audio and video files from my computer. Yeah.

I was trying to free up some internal HD space, and moved some shareware files to my external HD. Except, it seems I didn't move everything over and deleted a LOT of files without even thinking.

Am I fucked?

Depends. Even if you have emptied your Recycle Bin, data might still be recoverable, BUT NOT IF THEY HAVE ALREADY BEEN OVERWRITTEN. Time is of the essense - do NOT defragment or put anything on the hard disk affected. If it's your C: drive, do NOT install anything. Turn off system restore.

Shareware you can use:
PC Inspector File Recovery - careful, requires installation.
Restoration - standalone application, download to other drive and run. More clunky than PC Inspector though.

Good luck!

That recovered a lot of the file names, but not all of the files (mostly the videos). Any way of recovering the rest?

Bigger files have less chance of being recovered, since the probability that a part of them will be overwritten is greater. (I hope you are not saving those recovered files to the same drive, my friend). As such, that may be all you can get, unless someone here has a more robust file recovery application.

This is a great post. I've never really lost files like this, but I totally know how and what to do if this kind of file loss ever happens to me. GJ Zergrinch!

Get Data Back saved my 40 gig hdd long time back..i could recovere almost all that was important.

Try this helpful little Boot CD (Do not download it to your precious wiped hard disk!). There's a ton of helpful utilities there - if they can't do the job, nothing else can short of a commercial service!

HTTP Link of earlier version

Thanks a lot for the help, Zergrinch. I'll try it when I get home.