help-file been wiped but dont know where its gone!

purply

hi, please help!
Been working on a document since september. its on my usb stick.
Now, i make a back up of everything (i'm a teacher so if i ever lost my usb, i would be distraught), apart from this one doc-it was obviously one that had got away.

I was working on it and then it suddenly disappeared. It is no longer on my usb. If i go onto recent items from the start menu i can see the doc name but when i click on it, the doc will not open-says 'missing shortcut' and then 'the document or path is not valid' and gives me the option to browse for it. Ive done a search and its not on my laptop either.

I would understand if i had not saved my work and then lost lost it, but to lose a document that has been saved???? all i did was open it and type a couple of words.

anyone able to help-please?

fwor

It's possible that the USB drive has become corrupted, or it may have suffered a hardware failure. The former often happens if it is removed before a file write is complete.

You can run chkdsk on a USB drive from a Command Prompt, and if errors are found, chkdsk /f will attempt to fix them.

If you've done that, have a look at the USB drive Properties and see if the size of the drive is what you expect. If not, you can attempt to recover the missing space - sometimes you can, sometimes not (if it's a hardware fault).

albertross_2

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html
http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/
http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/dr.html

http://www.free-av.com/antivirclassic/avira_unerase.html
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm
http://www.pandorarecovery.com/
http://www.recuva.com/
http://www.download.com/Recover-Files/3000-2094_4-10715456.html?tag=lst-7
http://www.partition-recovery.com/
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
http://www.data-recovery-software.net/Linux_Recovery.shtml
http://www.fdrlab.com/software/tfu.html

http://www.runtime.org/products.htm
http://www.finaldata.com/sub_products/products_1.asp
http://www.restorer2000.com/
http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

jaydeeuk1

My wife who is a teacher had all her work deleted from her laptop when the idiot lab technicians decided to 'upgrade' without telling her. She had backups of older work, but not of the latest reports which she was working on.

I used a program called freeundelete which got about 90% back, and the other 10% back with content but layout messed up.

The first thing I told her to do was do not switch the laptop on as windows could overwrite the space on the hard drive where her work was saved - I would advise you not to copy anything to the usb stick.

If you plug the stick in, are there files still on there, and are they readable?

First download and install this program to your hard drive.

http://www.officerecovery.com/download/freeundelete.exe

After installing the program will load.

In the window that comes up, you will see a list of drives on the left hand side such as c:. d: etc. Look for the drive letter for your USB stick, select it and press 'scan' at the top left.

After a few seconds, a load of (hopefully) files and folders will appear on the right.

If you stored the file within a folder, the folder name should be there with a bit of luck, and double clicking on that folder should show the name of the file.

If so, select the file name and press 'undelete'. The programme will then make a copy of this file to your c:\ drive. If you don;t see your file there, then there is still a chance of getting it back, just makes things a little more complicated.

See how you get on

James

jje_2

A USB flash drive can have a problem when the drive is removed from the computer as its still writing thats why you are supposed to use the safely remove hardware icon .
I have had the problem about four times on good quality units . They also need to be kept away from magnetic/electric sources to prevent any chance of data corruption .

jje

purply

sorry for the delay in replying.
Thanks all for your responses, much appreciated, unfortunately i was not able to retrieve the lost file using office recovery.
Havent tried any of the others.
i lost another file today-not happy-tried again to retrieve it but to no avail.
not sure how to do a chkdsk on a USB from command promp...?
will buy a new usb but not happy that my work is so vulnerable!
p