BleepingComputer.com: Files dissapear

Welcome to BleepingComputer, a free community where people like yourself come together to discuss and learn how to use their computers. Using the site is easy and fun. As a guest, you can browse and view the various discussions in the forums, but can not create a new topic or reply to an existing one unless you are logged in. Other benefits of registering an account are subscribing to topics and forums, creating a blog, and having no ads shown anywhere on the site.

Click here to Register a free account now! or read our Welcome Guide to learn how to use this site.

Page 1 of 1

You cannot start a new topic
You cannot reply to this topic

Files dissapear They go away before my eyes!

#1 Wildabeast

Bleeping Lurker...

Group: Members
Posts: 1,106
Joined: 18-September 06
Gender:Male
Location:Nebraska, USA

Posted 27 January 2010 - 11:17 AM

I've had this happen a couple of times, at first I thought I did something.

Example, the other day I was looking for an address of an old friend, I couldn't find it, but knew I had it on an envelope file from Print Shop. It was on my F drive so I went looking for it and found it. When I double clicked on it, windows 7 showed it as gobledy gook for the address. I tried to use Microsoft word, but that didn't work either. Then it hit me, this is Print Shop! So I opened Print Shop, and now the envelope file is gone, completely missing from my computer. I still had the window which showed the file open, and it was gone from there and I can't find it anywhere.

Anybody else having this problem? Any ideas what's going on? :huh:

"The nine most feared words in the english language, 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help'..."
Ronald Reagan

#2 keyboardNinja

Bleepin' Ninja

Group: BC Advisor
Posts: 4,741
Joined: 19-December 09
Gender:Male
Location:teh interwebz

Posted 27 January 2010 - 11:35 AM

Not sure why it disappeared, but the file is still there, even if you can't see it.

Try using Recuva to recover the "deleted" file. Make sure you do not try to recover files to the same drive you are recovering them from, as you risk overwriting them before recovering them entirely.

As for why Windows Explorer can't see the files anymore, I don't know. But Recuva should be able to find them and restore them. Even if a file was "deleted", the only way it would be unrecoverable would be if you used a file shredding program to obliterate it (or it was overwritten with new data). Otherwise, it is simply marked as "free space". Recuva can recover these "deleted files" in case you want them back. Just make sure you do it before writing new data to the disk.

Let me know how it goes. :huh:

PICNIC - Problem In Chair, Not In Computer

20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web

#3 Wildabeast

Bleeping Lurker...

Group: Members
Posts: 1,106
Joined: 18-September 06
Gender:Male
Location:Nebraska, USA

Posted 28 January 2010 - 10:14 AM

Thanks Ninja, I tried my recovery program, then I went out and got Recova, neither one found it. I have no idea what happened to it. I've not installed or copied anything to that drive. Oh well, what can I say? :huh: