Help recovering folder/images

[orions_belt]

Hi all,

I've a question about folder and image recovery -

I had a folder on my laptop called 'Holiday photos', within this folder I had a number of sub-folders, ie - Spain, Florida, Canada etc.

Before moving to a new computer I was cleaning up my laptop and deleted one of these sub-folders, (Canada) from the 'Holiday photos' folder accidentally.

I moved the 'Holidays photos' folder to my external hard drive (missing the 'Canada' sub-folder), then moved the 'Holidays photos' folder to my new computer.

My question is, is there any way to recover my 'Canada' folder on my new computer? Is there any trace of it still remaining in the 'Holidays folder' or since it was moved out of there before moving to the hard-drive, is it lost forever?

I don't have access to my old laptop so getting it back from there is impossible.

Thanks for any help.

 

[_Pete_]

You might be lucky that the file hasn't been overwritten during the transfer. You would stand a better chance with the old hard drive but that isn't an option. You could try something like Recuva which is free. I would move what you have saved somewhere else using copy and paste then work on the transferred original. That way if everything goes pear shaped, which is quite possible then you at least have a back up. The problem is that every time you do something files get written to that location and once the lost picture files have been written over then they are lost for good. I must also stress that I have not had a lot of luck with free recovery programs and when I did something similar I bought Seagate file recovery software which did work but wasn't free.

 

[orions_belt]

Hi Pete,

Thanks for your reply, but I'm confused (sorry I'm a novice)

Would something like Recuva be able to recover my 'Canada' folder even though it wasn't in the 'Holidays photos' folder on my new computer? I've spoken to a few other people and they said that, 'because technically the 'Canada' photos were never on the new computer to begin with, it's impossible?'

Thanks for your input

 

[Deadpool]

You can't recover it from the new PC. If you had access to at least he Laptop's HDD you -probably- can, considering whoever is using it didn't write a lot of data and overwrote it, or that re-wrote all the disk with something like CCleaner.

 

[_Pete_]

I don't think that is correct. I do accept that the folder was deleted before it was moved. But I am assuming that the folder was in the same as the rest of the stuff that got transferred and if that is the case then the headerless files should still be there. So if my assumption is correct then, in theory, the files and the folder should be recoverable. It is one hell of a long shot though. As I say if you transferred everything to the new computer that was in the same place that he deleted files were in then, providing nothing else has been written to that location, then only the folder and files headers would have been deleted. whatever you do though make sure you copy and paste the existing folders to a different hard drive or USB pen drive then work on the folders/files on the first hard drive. That way if it goes wrong you have a back up. Whatever happens Recuva is a free program and it is worth a shot.