Help me undo a shift-delete

[Ihavenoidea]

Apoligies if this is in the wrong spot, I couldn't find a more suitable place.

So the story goes something like this... I was making a movie featuring the MMO Warhammer: Age of Reckoning using fraps and windows movie maker. After weeks of editing and lots of time and effort I had finally finished! Excited and ready to post the movie into relative forums, Somehow while deleting unused recordings I accidently (no idea how) deleted ALL of my recorded files.

They weren't in my rubbish bin because, of course, I shift deleted them.

Anyone been through a similar process have any tips? I have used 4 programs already that claim they will retrieve my shift-deleted data, but all I get back are some word/excel files and no videos.

Now it's only a movie so Im not really willing to pay big dollars for retrieving it, but certainly am willing to go to alot of effort, as I already have!

Thanks in advance

[DaveLembke]

http://www.undelete-plus.com/

This tool is what I use for data deleted in this manner. Success in getting all or majority of data back is dependant on how soon you catch the problem and avoid saving new information before running this utility. When data is shift-deleted it becomes flagged as once again part of the pool of available hard drive space. Once new data overwrites blocks of say shift-deleted data you would only be able to partially recover data as for the sector blocks on the hard drive where the prior data resided binary 0's and 1's have been altered to the stamp of that new data.... so if the pattern for that block was 10101010 and flagged as shift-delete, and something new came along it could consume that location with say 00000011 in which the 10101010 is gone.

If extremely important to get the data back you can take your chances with a data recovery center costing thousands of dollars which would try to read the differences in the magnetic fields amplitude to assemble what was prior from now as they measure the magnetic strength as if stronger than normal, the prior binary value was 1 and is weaker than a prior matching value of 1, say it was 0 prior, it would have a slightly weaker magnetic signature vs a bit that was written as 1 and then 1 vs 0 and then 1 or 1 and then 0. Very complicated process and this process's success also determines on if the data block hasnt been over written more than once which would wash out the prior magnetic signature.

This data recovery principle that they use is similar to the days of recordable cassettes when you record once on it and then record again and in a quiet portion between the next tune you hear remnants of the prior recording due to an incomplete magnetic amplitude cancellation, but their equipment is able to measure and pull out the prior recorded information to recompose the original recorded data to an alternate drive and then give you your data that was gone.

[TChai]

Ihavenoidea try looking in Temp folder for your videos

[BC_Programmer]

@TChai:

I declare Troll, here. Unfortunately I will also feed them.

Are you ever going to make a useful post here or simply make random, biased observations and assertions about what others post?

and why the .... would the videos be in the temp folder? Chances are he's CLOSED the application that made the videos, which I would imagine would delete the respective temporary files it created, which, being movie files would be large.

Additionally one wonders how Ihavenoidea would know what files were the video, assuming on the off-chance your random outburst is true and by some random stroke of luck they are even there, chances are they are not only named indescriptively but also split into multiple files.


There is nothing I can add to this post aside from the excellent advice DaveLembke has given, which while long is still a relatively short overview on the topic of deleted file recovery. Well, actually, I can add one thing-

Recuva is an OK recovery tool:

http://www.recuva.com/