I lost a file with 500 doll photos on it, on my computer,

jazzman · Post by **jazzman** » Sun Mar 23, 2008 4:43 pm

can anyone help?

I was adding all doll photos into one file on an external hard drive so that I could make my albums on the doll album. I thought I;d get them all in one place and had called the file Boy Toys. But now that there is a company with same name, I thought I'd change the name of the file. I clicked the the name to change it. and the entire file disappeared. What could I have done?

I did a search of boy toy, boy toys on the search function. I checked my harddrive, TRASH, my pictures, C Drive, External drive, and can't find anything under either of those names.

Then I started opening every single file on the hard drive to see if I advertently added it to another file...no luck

I tried sorting files by size since this one should be a big file, but again no luck. I think I actually had 1200 photos on it, including all of my Yaraja which I have no extra copies of, all of the old doll photos from companies no longer in business, etc.

If I had gone down and hit CUT when I was right-clicking so fast, could I have actually deleted or is there a way to retrieve it.

Seems to me that a sign came up saying that I put someting on the board and did I want to save, it but I had been sending photos to people of teh Charlie doll etc, and thought it was that. Have I in fact cut and deleted my entire doll collection file or is there a way to find it?

Can anyone suggest what could have transpired.

Slim · Post by **Slim** » Sun Mar 23, 2008 5:59 pm

Files can disappear on an invalid drive or on a virus infected computer system. So you should check your drives for hardware errors and viruses. And it’s still possible that a file can get an invalid name too. When that happens you can’t do anything with that file anymore for a file with an invalid name isn’t recognized by the system anymore. That means that things like opening, renaming, moving or deleting isn’t possible anymore with that file. But I believe that those files stay visible for the system. When you add a lot of pictures to a file a file can get corrupt too. In that case the file information isn’t stored properly. This has happened to me with a Word file in which I stored pictures too. But I believe that two things could’ve happened to your file. Maybe you accidentally gave the file another name? If you know when you saved it the last time you can do a date search on your system. Or did you accidentally delete the file permanently? Well, for every file on your system the computer stores information about that file, things like where he can find it on your system and how big it is. For some reason this information isn’t always stored properly and that can cause a file checksum error if a wrong file size was stored. In that case you’ll miss the file if you check for the file size. Is the file deleted or has it accidentally changed to an invisible file? To check for invisible files you should change your system settings so that all files including the system files will be visible for you. When you do a search you can tell the computer that he has to search in those invisible files too by the way. And if files aren’t deleted with a special program or tool which can delete a file permanently most deleted files are still present on your computer. Only the information about a deleted file is really deleted. But there are several programs available who can find those deleted files for you and fully restore them too. Use such a program to see if he can find your missing file.

Regards,
Slim

NamRepaid · Post by **NamRepaid** » Sun Mar 23, 2008 6:36 pm

Windows? I lost about 2500 pics a few weeks ago the whole "my documents" folder with sub folders too. Found them with scandisk & or disk clean up. They were in limbo in a system folder for corrupted files on the C drive named "DIR00000" . I just had to rename the folder in there and they came back. Then move it out of the DIR folder to the C drive.

Good luck with it!

Nam

noquiexis · Post by **noquiexis** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 12:14 pm

jazzman,

Newer computers come with a file recovery system. In Windows XP it's called "Recovery Point". On my Windows 98SE Gateway the program is called GoBack. These programs turn your hard drive back to an earlier date. They saved my butt more than once! Try to back up your files before losing the most current information.

If you did not back up these images, then the folder (directory) may have been renamed or deleted. There may be a way in your operating system to recover deleted files and repair damaged directories. Check your manuals and online help systems.

If you are able to recover the lost files, back them up immediately to another hard drive, CD, DVD, or Zip drive.

As Slim said, the default condition for Windows is to hide "hidden" and system files. In Windows Explorer, go to View / Folder Options / "View" tab. There should be an option to "Show Hidden and System Files". Check this and ignore the warning message.

Close Windows Explorer, then re-open it to see if your files and folders (directories) show up.

If none of this works, try to install a new hard drive, and look up hard drive recovery services on the internet. This is obviously a last ditch effort and I don't recommend it unless you are running a business and you have lost critical operating files.

Good luck!

"To err is human. To really foul things up, you need a computer!" - Bill Gates at Microsoft.

femdoll · Post by **femdoll** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 1:54 pm

Slim wrote: Only the information about a deleted file is really deleted. But there are several programs available who can find those deleted files for you and fully restore them too. Use such a program to see if he can find your missing file.

This is true, but.... the moment you add new files, the space where those 'undelete' files are, can be overwritten.... so you have to undelete it right away. The more things you do on your computer, the more change you have you can't retrieve those files anymore....

Post by **RaDiv** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 2:24 pm

I had a similar problem. By accident I changed the name of a folder. I ran a search and found the folder that way.

Do you remember any of the filenames? Try a search.

jazzman · Post by **jazzman** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 2:55 pm

NamRepaid wrote:Windows? I lost about 2500 pics a few weeks ago the whole "my documents" folder with sub folders too. Found them with scandisk & or disk clean up. They were in limbo in a system folder for corrupted files on the C drive named "DIR00000" . I just had to rename the folder in there and they came back. Then move it out of the DIR folder to the C drive.

Good luck with it!

Nam

I bought a disk clean up program online and ran it but nothing appeared that I would recognize.

jazzman · Post by **jazzman** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 2:56 pm

RaDiv wrote:I had a similar problem. By accident I changed the name of a folder. I ran a search and found the folder that way.

Do you remember any of the filenames? Try a search.

How did you find the file with a new name?

jazzman · Post by **jazzman** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 2:58 pm

noquiexis wrote:jazzman,
In Windows Explorer, go to View / Folder Options / "View" tab. There should be an option to "Show Hidden and System Files". Check this and ignore the warning message.

Close Windows Explorer, then re-open it to see if your files and folders (directories) show up.

I

ok, I tried this too, both on my laptop and on the external hard drive where I had the photos. I don't see the old Boy toys file or anything new.

jazzman · Post by **jazzman** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 3:06 pm

There were 998 photos. There is a god afterall and he takes the form of DF helpers, thanks guys. I did the view hidden files thing, then went to Program files, File Recover and there was nothing there, so I did search for the word boy and it came up but had been renamed . It is now safe and sound. I had scads of the Rareborg photos from yesteryear, as well as my own RD 4 yaraja, and others. They were irreplaceable. All is now well. Mucho gracias to all

Post by **RaDiv** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 4:45 pm

Good to hear you found'em

Post by **AlexKnight** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 6:01 pm

Maybe a tip for future use... get an external harddrive, and do a backup every two weeks of all your data. Now it was just a user fault, but it could have been a mechanical fault.. then your data would be gone for good.

I have a backup of all my pictures and documents, and I update that backup every two weeks.

Having everything doubled up reduces the chance of losing your data a lot. The chance on both harddisks going defect is very small.

jazzman · Post by **jazzman** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 9:29 pm

They were on an external hard drive, now I just had a moment to scroll through them and I have only a-d...900 plus, so I am missing a lot of photos yet. guess I will keep trying things. All the Rareborg, All the RD photos are missing..