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Undeleting files

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by saltjohn.john

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My server is running windows 2000 advanced server with terminal services. While creating client profiles, i directed some user profiles to be created in an existing folder with data. This must have overwritten the existing data which i cant find anymore. This data originally was sitting on a D drive( separate physical drive), and later cut and pasted over to C drice(another physical drive) where it has now been overwritten. Is there any way/software to recover this data?

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by jimklallsoo

Option 1 - Silly question but can't you just restore from backup the orignal state of the system?

If not there are some utilities you can download from www .downloads .com to undelete files which have been deleted.

Unfortunatley, if option 1 as i have suggested above is not an option then you may be up the creek without a paddle.

As i am sure you are no doubt aware a hard-disk stores parts of files in blocks of a hard-disk like so:

In lamens terms, say we have a file with the name Robert then the R could be stored on block 23 three of disk drive c:/ the letter O may be stored on block 16 of disk drive c:/ the letter B may be stored on block 52 of disk drive c:/ etc. etc.

When we create/save a file on a hard-disk the blocks where the data resides R,O and B in my example are stored in blocks 16, 23 and 52 are marked as in use and the O/S is instructed it cannot perform a write action to those blocks.

However, when a deletion of data occurs the blocks which were marked as in use are now marked as accessible e.g. ready for new data to be written to.

Therefore parts of what you have deleted may be recoverable but other parts may already have been writen to with new data.

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