Deleted avi files, any hope of restoring them?

Cherrycola

Ive somehow managed to delete my whole Downloads folder with all my, ahem, completely legally downloaded movies, tv series and music, so managed to wipe about 20gb's of stuff off the laptop, forever!
I was deleting old stuff, moving some new stuff to the media player, and in a fit of rapid delete i think some sort of systems file popped up, i hit delete before i even noticed what it was, and the whole downloads folder disappeared....im still hurting.
I think it was one of those .ini files(they seem to be randomly popping up all over my laptop recently, and telling me if i delete them the system may not work properly! :eek:) So what the hell have i done??!

Ive tried the free Recuva, but its not finding them, should i be looking at purchasing something better to see if they can be restored?

Its not a huge deal to download the movies etc again, but i just cant remember what else was in the frikkin folder with them, and thats what has me worried, that ive deleted something important.

Ive since tried backing up my files to prevent the same mishap with treasured photos etc(yeah, horse, stable door, bolt...:rolleyes: ), but it keeps failing, ive tried using the external hardrive to back up and still no luck.

Anyone have any wise words of wisdom, other than stay away from the delete button in future! :P

Voodu Child

Stop using the computer, turn it off.

If you are sitting there browsing the web, backing stuff up, downloading recovery applications, you are likely gradually overwriting the deleted files. The more you use the computer, the less stuff you will be able to successfully recover.

Keywal

is it me or did you say anything about emptying the recycle bin?
i didn't notice you saying that..... in there perhaps.

What the Voodu says is correct... you are over writing the free space it created but messing around on the machine.

D'Agger

I'm assuming that it's not in the recycle bin - if it was a large folder then it would ask you whether you want to permanently delete it or not as it was too big for the RB.

Never had something like that happen me but a few people I know have used uneraser as a software and they've managed to salvage files using it so that's worth checking out.

Capt'n Midnight

photorec them onto an external drive

unless they are massive

BostonB

If you can't remember it, its most likely not important.

Keep multiple backups on multiple disks, not just one. One disk for recent backup, another for long term. Maybe DVD's for Archiving smaller stuff very long term. keep the disks separated so if you have break in someone doesn't steal all the disks on one go. Just in case someone does steal them, encrypt the disks.