is there any hope?

J

jak ali

New Member
Hi all I’m new her with dummy question
I do factory recovery for my old computer (win xp) and forget to back up hidden files which contain important info and pictures for my family.. Is there any way I got them back or I lost them forever..Appreciate your help
 
Shut down the computer, pull the drive out. Every moment the computer is running there's a chance that more and more of the files will become irrecoverable as stuff gets written over them.

After that, download a program like Recuva (by Piriform, google it up, I'm sure you'll find it), plug the drive in an another computer and then just use the programs to find&recover the files (whichever ones it can) - but DO NOT SAVE THE FILES ON THE DRIVE YOU'RE RECOVERING THEM FROM.

Also, there's no guarantee that all -or any- of the files will be usable. Reinstall is a pretty big operation, lotsa stuff might've gotten written over. But it's worth a shot.
 
thank u so much for your help.. just question, i didn't install new windows yet as i can't find my winxp cd.. can i still do what u suggest or i need windows first?
 
Don't install Windows on the disk from that you want to recover files. It would lead to the loss of the files. You can try to recover files using following:
1. Get out the disk and plug it into another (good) computer;
2. Download a data recovery program, install the program on that other (good) computer, and launch it on the disk with lost files.
 
If you didn't install it, don't. That's only a good thing - the less stuff you have put on it since wiping the data you want to recover, the bigger the chance of you fully recovering them. As outlined before, plug it in an another computer and use a recovery program to save the files on a location OTHER THAN THE DISC YOU'RE RECOVERING STUFF FROM - otherwise you might end up the recovered stuff overwriting other files you haven't yet recovered.
 
I agree with the other posters.
You might also want to try a program call PC Inspector File Recovery available here
I have had great success recovering deleted data, data lost due to formats etc using this program.
Good luck!!!
 
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