HELP! Ive just lost years of photos!

ktez

I am absolutely clueless when it comes to computers and tonight I have just proved thst fact.
I was trying to transfer photos from my laptop to an external hard drive to free up space. (it was my first time using an ehd which prob didn't help) I checked that the photos were in the external hard drive, went back to my laptop and hit delete. It asked did I want to permanently delete them as there was not enough room in my recycle bin and I hit yes!! When I went back into the ehd, the photos file is there but nothing in it.
Have I lost these forever? If I have, I will be distraught...
Any help greatly appreciated

Toxteth_OGrady

No, but you will need to use a recovery program you can download for free. If you have another computer other than the one you deleted the files from I strongly suggest you switch off the one you lost the files on NOW to improve your chances of recovery.

Rikki

Are the pictures still on the external hard drive?

ktez

Siwtching off now, thanks

Toxteth_OGrady

Do you have another computer you can use to come back here for help?

Dave_C_2

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

Free and easy to use

Just tried a download and noticed that there is an option to add the Chrome browser. Do not choose this as it could overwrite some pictures.

Toxteth_OGrady

If you have another computer I suggest you get totally familiar with how to use the program by reading as much as you can here first;

http://www.piriform.com/docs/recuva

Then install it on your the computer that you DIDN'T lose the files on and practice trying to recover photos on there - doesn't matter if there aren't any it'll just help you get familiar with the program.

Once you are happy with the program restart the problem computer but don't do ANYTHING else other than download/install Recuva on there and run it.

Any other activities you do (e.g. opening email, web browser etc) increases the risk of your deleted photos being permanently overwritten.

:cool:

TOG

romylou_2

Ktez

Can you not just restore the photo's from your recycle bin. It should put them back into the original place from where they were deleted.

spannerzone

romylou wrote: »

Ktez

Can you not just restore the photo's from your recycle bin. It should put them back into the original place from where they were deleted.

It sounds like there were so many that they wouldn't fit in the recycle bin so said 'permanently delete as there's not enough room in the recycle bin'

This really shows how important it is to familiarise yourself with making regular backups. Storage drives are so cheap that people really need to remember to backup important stuff.

Good luck to the OP you might get some files back using recovery software.....

Follow Toxteth o grady's advice about using another PC to do the recovery as every time you use your PC there's a chance of the deleted (but still potentially recoverable files) will be overwritten and gone for good.

CoolHotCold

If you are happy there are free programs that will retrieve the data, or if you don't want to take any chances either go to a indepentant company Or go into PcWorld who will send the hard drive off to Knoll (the de-facto data recovery specialists) for £100


The way that deletion of Windows systems work is it doesn't delete the files it just makes the location on the hard drive writeable (so essentially turning the physical location on the HDD to unlocked and free to be used) so STOP, TURN OFF, DON'T USE IT.
Using it may cause data corruption and pictures will either be unable to be backed up or are overwritten or are partially corrupted (with photos its much easier to corrupt)

The_Grandmaster

try recuva (as stated above) - should be able to recover most of them if the data hasn't been overwritten.