Where are our photos?

pami_81

About four months ago I was removing some duplicates of photos from our hard drive, which was running low on space. I removed the duplicates and obviously then emptied the recycle bin afterwards, to clear up that space. Later that day I realised that the entire contents of the Store folder, which included photos from the last five years, were also gone. My boyfriend, who studied computing science in college, tried to reverse the computer back to the state that it was in the week before or something like that (can't remember exactly how far he tried to go with it). The photos did not return. We've tried file restoring software and viewing hidden files, searching file names, but still no photos - yet there is a suspiciously big amount of space taken up on the hard drive.
What I don't understand is how such a large amount of images could have been deleted that quickly if I had deleted them by accident. We are talking hundreds, if not thousands, of photos, so the PC should have taken a few minutes to delete them and consequently delete them from the bin.
Is there anything else that we can do? The photos are sorely missed...:(

Many thanks for any help.

whitesands

Not sure if this helps, but if your deleting a huge folder you usually get a window saying the folder is too big for the recycle bin, do you want to delete it completely (or something to that effect).

Try your search bar, search for *.jpg

Torqay

System Restore only does what it says on the tin: it restores system files, it does not recover personal files.

Run Recuva, you might be able to recover at least some of the deleted photos (from areas that have not been overwritten since).

riclad

Try this http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
a 1000 gig drive is only 70 euro,
i dont understand why people dont backup photos,in 2 or 3places,
drives are so cheap,a dvdr is 30cent.holds 4.7gig.
see this
http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm/
shows whats using up space,on a disk
windows uses gigabyte s of space for cache, temp files ,acts like a ramdisk.
try search by name.eg steve, home, holiday ,xmas,birthday, ,eg name of photos,names you used.
what os are you using, xp, win 7,
theres programs to undelete files ,
when windows deletes a file ,it just deletes ,the location info,
the file is still there ,
but it can be written over,erased, by temp files,
or say you download a mp3,or program, to install,etc

riclad

see http://signaturewebmedia.com/blog/142/windows-7-vista-cannot-find-the-files-saved-on-c-drive/
see
http://lifehacker.com/5511904/how-to-analyze-clean-out-and-free-space-on-your-hard-drive,
dont delete any folder ,you can delete the temporary internet files,knock off system restore,
as thats saving files all the time to your pc.
my drive has 2gig free ,the pagefile cache,, is 900meg, nearly one gig.
system restore takes up a few gig,
you can reduce pagefile to say 300meg, from control panel,system.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/sysdm_advancd_perform_change_vmpagefile.mspx?mfr=true
The recommended size is equivalent to 1.5 times the amount of RAM on your system.


so system restore plus pagefile is likely to be 2 to 5gig on a average pc
1gig is 1000meg that doest incliude various temp files.
if theres 2 accounts on a pc,
files for user 1 will may only appear when you are logged in as user1.
search from administrator level account.

Lundar.

doing a system restore , means that some files might be hidden,

1. go to a folder
2. click on organise
3. then click on view
4. then look for hidden files and folders.
5. tick the show hidden files,folders and drives..

then go to where the images were stored before , they might be still there

pami_81

Thanks. We'll try at least some of these suggestions.

Unfortunately, the reason we hadn't backed them up was purely a question of money. We had talked about buying an external hard drive or big USB memory stick when we next got paid, but by that time the damage was already done...

Sup08

Torqay wrote: »

System Restore only does what it says on the tin: it restores system files, it does not recover personal files.

Run Recuva, you might be able to recover at least some of the deleted photos (from areas that have not been overwritten since).

As above, 4 months is a long time to realise that this folder was deleted and depending on how many times you used the PC, saved files and deleted other files over that 4 months will leave very little files for recovery.
If you deleted the files for more space (even though you deleted more than you wanted) if you filled that space up again, you more than likely have overwritten the files.
I hope it work out for you, and if it help I use EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional and have had great success.

riclad

You should buy a external drive now, you can reduce space by switching off system restore,uninstall programs,games you are not using,
clone copy your hardrive to external drive.
see http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2008/09/05/5-free-apps-to-clone-your-hard-drive/
make a partition say 300gig to hold the clone data.
divide new drive into 2 partitions,
i recommend this one,
http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/
first free up space a few gig by copying some folders to the hardrive.
clone copy,means all data on drive c is copied to new drive.
if you are on a budget buy a 500gig drive.
if drive space is small ,anytime you install a new program,it takes up space, likely to write over lost data, photos.
so you need to free up space before you install anything.
external drives are much cheaper than usb sticks re space per euro.
System restore can take up gigs of space.

pami_81

I just wanted to point out that we did NOT wait 4 months to try and recover the photos! We started on the day they vanished. It has now been 4 months of helpless troubleshooting.

Sup08

pami_81 wrote: »

I just wanted to point out that we did NOT wait 4 months to try and recover the photos! We started on the day they vanished. It has now been 4 months of helpless troubleshooting.

Thanks for pointing that out, my bad.
Well then you should use one of the recovery programmes mentioned in previous posts. Also it would be best to recover to a separate HDD and not the HDD you are trying to recover the pictures from.

riclad

if that was my pc, I,D BUY a good caddy, sata 2.5inch, transfer the drive into it, then use another pc to acess ,work on it.
Even a p4 2.oghz would do, 1gig ram,winxp.
Maybe buy one adverts ie 110 euro approx, pc or laptop.
Dont get a metal caddy, should be plastic, dont touch the drive ,pcb,circuit board, be very gentle when ,handling it.
Some photos may be erased by other files,program install, temp files overwriting.
You could try a linux cd ,livecd, eg mint this can see ,copy any windows folder,file.
Theres programs that show or list all files on a hardrive.
see http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/attrib.mspx?mfr=true
files may be hiidden attrib h,
read up on how windows delete works,
AS I posted before,it doesnt erase the files ,its more like,it makes them non visible .
Thats how fbi etc forensic pc experts recover much of the data when examining a disk.
they recover,or undelete the files.
if they are not completely overwritten.
i find spacemonger very useful ,as it shows the files on a drive,
zoom in out,thru folders ,directorys,
see whats taking up space.
it has a good search function too .
Copy music files to a dvdr ,or cdr, or delete mp3s that you don,t need.
ITS easier if theres at least 7 to 11 gig free on the drive.
system restore goes back to a restore point ,
eg 2 months ago,if there,s one saved , which should include ,my documents, my music etc
ITS a good idea to make a restore point once a month.
But it takes up a alot of disk space.
see caddys here,
http://www.peats.com/cgi-bin/catalog_v3.cgi?id=8137&type=subcat

Sup08

If you are around North Dublin I'll have a look for you F.O.C. if you want.

RUCKING FETARD

What did you use to find/delete duplicates?

Have you been using this HDD as your main drive for everyday stuff for the last 4 months?

riclad

this article may be of interest to you,
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/mat-honan-data-recovery/all/
there are companys that restore lost pc data,
They may look at your pc,and give you an estimate,
it,ll cost x euros to restore data.
By the way, the i386 folder in windows is large ,its used to hold driver files for any devices you may install,connect to the pc,in the future,
you can copy it to a dvdr .

I dont know if a company can restore data, if that folder was mostly or completely overwritten by other data ,temp files etc and your drive is nearly full.
Someone on boards might know is there a company that gives free estimates.
its quite easy to clone the drive to an external drive using
an easus free program.
if you want to do this say, i just want my photos back, no applications ,or music need restoring.
livecds like ebcd or ultimatebootdisk have restore programs on them ,i think.
ie emergency boot disk.

Overheal

Torqay wrote: »

System Restore only does what it says on the tin: it restores system files, it does not recover personal files.

Actually starting with windows 7 it's set up by default to restore settings AND files. You can right click on a folder or file to access previous versions that are saved within a restore point or a windows backup. These settings are accessible from Start > System Recovery

to restore one of the Libraries (eg. Music, Documents, Pctures) you cant do it from the Library. The library is a joint location folder*, if that makes sense: it actually is a combination of any number of locations you tell it to pull from. eg. I keep my music on my \ drive and my itunes is on C:\ but it's all present in my single Music folder. TO RESTORE FROM ONE OF THESE LIBRARY LOCATIONS, you have to go to the Physical drive location: eg. c:\users\jon\public\photos. Then, right click on that folder and from the context menu click restore previous versions.

*I'm sure you knew that, just saying it for gen. audience

Also, Windows Live gives you 7GB of Free online storage, using Windows Live Skydrive. Everyone should have this. Skydrive is, the best thing since gmail. And that's saying a lot. You can treat Skydrive like a folder on your PC (theres actually an installer to do that, it then gets treated like a library folder). This folder is then automatically synced with your cloud. Especially handy for storing important files, or for staying synced if you work on multiple machines (and I work on three: A Desktop, A laptop, and a windows tablet. I could only be more of a shill if I had the windows phone). Skydrive is going to as I understand it be built in to windows 8 and will be integral to the new version of microsoft office for handling files.

sabahm

Oh that's really sad. I am surprised that if you have a bulk amount of data (photos) then why the windows did not ask for it which it normally asks and shows that 'x' amount of files are deleting (in-progress) or whatsoever. Quiet strange! Anyway, you can try some data recovery tool which will not completely recover all your media files but i believe that it may get you some. Some options include; recovermyfiles, prosofteng, stellarinfo and easeus.

You need to do some research work as well to try doing it from some free sources and if you did not succeed in that, then try some paid options or ask some solution (service) providers who can do the recovery process onto your system.