Windows 7 - Searching for a prog or 3

Hello again Experts  :-)

I had 8 .jpgs of about 200K size. Three of them accidentally got
deleted. I spent a few hours searching for the 3 and failed.

Please advise. I am too exhausted to continue  :-(

TIA

If they were on your hard drive and you hit 'delete' they should be in your
recycle bin.
If they were on removeable media such as CD-RW or USB pen-drive they will
not be in the recycle bin and you will need an Undelete utility to find
them. Search Google for a freeware one.
HTH
R.

Right on the button Ragnar. Thank you  :-)

You can try Photorec. But it probably does not work the way other undelete
programs would. I tested it once, and it worked. Like a lot of programs
like this, it can dig up a *lot* of irrelevant things, including the
files you actually want.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

On the partition containing the deleted files, you should avoid writes
to the partition, until this data recovery is done. For example, if
you are scanning C: for deleted JPG files, you would  write the
scavenged results to D:. You do not want anything written to C:,
because once a file is "deleted", it could then be overwritten
by the save operation of another file. So there is a risk, of the
3 files you deleted, one of them could get overwritten. There are
many file operations on the C: drive that would not be under your
control, and perhaps it would only be a matter of time until those
deleted JPGs were overwritten and unrecoverable.

So, good luck. Recovering deleted files comes with no guarantee
of success. The more control you have over the situation (like,
JPGs were on a "quiet" data partition), the better the odds of
recovery.

And if they were still sitting in the Recycle Bin, that is what
the Recycle Bin is for. To give you one last chance to stop yourself from
deleting something valuable.

Paul

If you deleted the files, they went to the Recycle Bin (assuming you have
Windows), and are still there unless the recycle bin has been emptied.

If the Recycle Bin has been emptied, then you need a program that can
recover the file from the hard drive, or what ever drive it was stored on
before it was deleted.

A file takes space on the drive. When you delete the file, all that happens
is the space is _marked_ as not occupied. The space actually is occupied,
but is marked as empty. A new file comes along that is looking for empty
space, and it can be placed on top of the file you are looking for. IF YOU
HAVE NOT STORED NEW FILES SINCE DELETING THE OLD ONE(S), THEN THE OLD FILES
CAN BE RECOVERED. THE LONGER YOU GO WITHOUT RECOVERING THE FILES YOU LOST,
THE LESS THE CHANCES ARE THAT THE RECOVERY WILL BE SUCCESSFUL. I am not
sure, but I believe you can buy file recovery software from Best Buy, or
equivelent. You might find file recovery software on the 'net that you can
download, I assume such downloads will want to hit your credit card. You can
have the software instantly if you download, or you can jump in the car and
drive across town. Your keyword for this is FILE RECOVERY SOFTWARE.

I gotta double check, but I believe that anything that is deleted will go to
the recycle bin. Having said that, just the name of the file will go there,
not the actual file.

When something is deleted, all that happens is the space that is marked as
occupied is marked as not occupied, the recycle bin makes a list of space
that it has recently marked as not occupied, no matter where it is, but
recovery FROM the recycle bin would require the memory media to be present
else the marker can not be reset to show the space as occupied.

But in any case, if the deleted files are on any media, the hard disk or a
removable media of some sort, then file recovery software is probably needed
to get the file back if the recycle bin has been emptied.

I cannot remember what happened the last time I deleted a file from removable
media. I am thinking the recycle bin keeps track of it and offers a Restore
File option. Everything in my recycle bin at this moment all came from Drive
C.

Not true. I deleted the three files and all went into the Recycle bin.
All 3 came out intact.

The recycle bin is just a list of files that are flagged to be deleted.
Anything that is "in" the recycle bin is just a file name and the location.
When you delete a file, the recycle bin gets an entry. When the recycle bin
is emptied, then the file names in the list are set to be deleted.

When a file is written, it takes space that no other file can also use. The
space is defined in a header that you cannot see or do anything about, but
when another file comes along looking for a place to reside, the information
in the header tells it that it cannot reside here and that it must keep
looking for a place to live. When a file is deleted, all that happens is
that the header is removed so that a new file coming along can reside on
that space -- obvioulsy the new file overwrites the old file. The new file
sets the header space so that the next new file that comes along will not
reside on the same space.

When a file goes to the recycle bin, all that happens is that the recycle
bin makes a list of files that are allowed to have the header rewritten so
that the space can be made available to new files. As long as the recycle
bin shows a file, that file is not gone and the space cannot be used by
another file. When the recycle bin is emptied, then the file space can be
written over by a new file. Until the recycle bin is empty, all files that
are flagged in it are held as whole, and they can be restored. Simply double
click an entry that is in the recycle bin, and the file will be restored,
that is the file will not be flagged for deletion anymore.

So, you put something into the recycle bin that you later restored. Big
deal. The trick, and the question you asked, is how to recover a file AFTER
the recycle bin has been emptied. That is more of a chore.

If your question was how to find something in the recycle bin, then I
apologize, I thought you were smarter than that.

Very interesting Paul. I will make a copy of that information.
Have a great weekend  :-)