Lost data on flash drive

[truenorth]

I recently have lost a file on a flash drive. I have perused the web and there are a plethora of programs offered that "assure" full recovery. The flash drive remains fully functional. It now has files on it that were on another flash drive that was installed at the same time in another USB port. Does anyone know of a free program that will at the very least enable me to determine if the "lost" file is still recoverable? And yes i do know i should have backed up the file on another medium. You live and learn. truenorth

[BC_Programmer]

Recuva is free and can both determine if you can recover as well as perform the recovery.

But if the file was overwritten in the process of copying other files over it may be lost.

[truenorth]

BC, Thank you. I had seen while searching the "Recuva" program with a "free" option. However i figured as is often the case it would only do limited functions and one would have to buy it to really find out it's capabilities. I will try it and see. Yes i was aware that overwriting usually results in not being able to recover. My actual loss was over 1000 movies i have and a spread sheet of all the data on them. It is so much i am discouraged to even input it again. It took me over a year to get it all "saved" in the 1st place.truenorth

[soybean]

truenorth, do you know how files got overwritten?  If you were merely adding files to that flash drive and the drive became full, you should have gotten a message saying the drive is full. 

[truenorth]

soybean, In fact as far as i can tell i was NOT accessing or in any way using the flash drive that lost the files and/or had them over written. That particular flash is always in the same usb port on the same computer (in case i need to modify the movie data in the spreadsheet on it). I had some music on the other (much larger) flash drive that i had exported on the large flash to that same computer. That was achieved however sometime later when i went to deal with  movie issues the data was gone and the music files were there as well as other items from the large flash . All my movie data and small other pdf files on the small flash were all gone. truenorth

[patio]

How did you create the .pdf's ? ?
Perhaps that app saved a backup copy when it was edited/created...

[truenorth]

patio, Not too positive about all the pdf files but i believe most of them were probably downloaded instruction manuals for various tools or equipment that i garnered from the internet (as pdf files) and saved for posterity (which i now know can be a very short time) on my flash drive. I haven't yet had a moment to try Bc's "Recuva" program but when i do i shall report. Not holding out too much hope. My main reason (excuse) for not backing up that movie data was that i was constantly (about every other day) modifying the data. So i was living on borrowed time i suppose. truenorth

[patio]

What app did you use creating the movie database ? ?
I should have been clearer in my Post...sorry.

[truenorth]

The program used to create the movie database was "Excel" from the microsoft office 2003 suite. truenorth

[patio]

Excel has an autosave feature...

Here Ya Go...

[truenorth]

patio, Followed your link. In my case on the particular computer i always used for that "movie" flash drive it is located on my "G" drive. However i get the impression from your link that for that "auto save " feature to have worked i would have had to "enable" it which of course because at that time i did not know of it's availability i did not do so. Now having said that there is tons of stuff however in "temp" part of the thread. Nothing that looks like an excel file though. Here is an example of something in it that seems to meet most of the criteria (it appears to be in Java) and denoting Java via the "open with" it doesn't open anything--(it is only about a 75KB file) G:\Documents and Settings\xxxx\Local Settings\Temp\e4j3.tmp_dir8948 ,truenorth

[truenorth]

Latest news flash. Finally got to download and run "Recuva". 270 files were found. All but about 4 were red balled--one was orange. Tried quite a few which were my "movie list" files. Both in normal and "deep" mode. Made no difference all results were the same (except one which i think was in Egyptian hieroglyphics) which was
Microsoft Office Excel File Repair Log

Errors were detected in file 'J:\DVDs (version 1).xls'
The following is a list of repairs:

Damage to the file was so extensive that repairs were not possible. Excel attempted to recover your formulas and values, but some data may have been lost or corrupted.

So unless new ideas are forthcoming i think that Elvis has left the building and he isn't coming back. truenorth