Commiserations on a disaster please

[Patrisia]

I have just done the unbelievable - wiped out an entire Carrington folder by over writing, while not paying attention, and not just deleted it - duh!
It is not as bad as it could be, a lot of it is still recorded in a FH programme but things like Carrington contact emails, census images carefully obtained and paid for from you-know-where, lots of odds and ends, all gone!
I can't find a crying smiley, so just imagine it!

[Geoffers]

I have just done the unbelievable - wiped out an entire Carrington folder by over writing, while not paying attention, and not just deleted it - duh!
AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!


emails, census images carefully obtained and paid for from you-know-where, lots of odds and ends, all gone!
Oh Patrisia, Do you not even have print outs of the census returns? - back up copies???? All that work. Oh well, as someone once told me, if you learn by it, it's an experience, if you don't then you've made a mistake.

A passing thought as a way of storing the information you've got left is to e-mail it to yourself, either to your main account, or a new e-mail address and ferreting it away as a back-up until you can get some means of permanently backing up the data.

Time to have a stiff drink in sympathy

Saddened of Charlbury

[IreneH]

Bugger! :(

[peter nicholl]

Oh Patrisia, how awful, the stuff nightmares are made of. I can only imagine:eek: I echo Geoffer's thoughts and double on Irene's.

Yours in Sympathy
Peter

[Chasing Caseys]

My commiserations also

The day my internet provider decided to change the way it looked three years of valuable emails and contacts were lost forever (strange how it was just the one email folder ). I used to print everything out at first but accumalated so much paper work and being the sort of person that hates any kind of cutter i threw them away (to the recycle bin i may add ) :eek: I didnt know about backing up, still dont, but now everytime i recieve or download anything it goes straight on to disc. Have you passed any of this info on to family so they can copy anything for you ?. I retrieved some through my - luckily - boringly letting everyone know what i had found. I was really mad at first but soon calmed down as there really isnt much that can be done. Its a shame "you know who" dont have a previously viewed or downloaded image section like scotlandspeople that way its easy to find old census and bmds you have downloaded and put in your timeline.

Very sorry to hear this, i know exactly how you feel.

[Mythology]

Oh 'eck! :eek:

I wondered what you were cheesed off about in your last e-mail - now I know. :(

I don't know *all* your Carrington stuff, of course, but from the bits that I've been involved in, I know there's a lot of it - I'm so sorry to hear that a significant chunk has gone AWOL.

As an *immediate* solution, I can only do the same as Geoffers and suggest a whole bottle of Sloe Gin followed by a dozen large Rum & Shrubs.
(Please note - I do not accept any responsibility for your PC being washed up on the Irish coast tomorrow morning as a result of following this advice)

What suits one person won't alway suit another, but, for the future, a couple of other backing up ideas:
If you have two drives in your PC, use the second one to back up FH stuff - I do this at least once a day, so if the stuff I'm working on goes up the creek, at worst I 've only lost a day's work.
If you have a CD writer, and buy cheap CDs in bulk at about 10p a time, burning the whole lot to CD once in a while isn't expensive.
I know you can't use password protection in your webspace with your ISP, but if you still have plenty of space left [edit - and you're not worried about someone else stumbling across it], that's another possibility - just upload the lot now and then for safe keeping.

Whatever, I hope that getting back what you obviously can (e.g. the census images) from this mishap doesn't prove too difficult.

[Patrisia]

Oh Patrisia, Do you not even have print outs of the census returns? - back up copies???? All that work. Oh well, as someone once told me, if you learn by it, it's an experience, if you don't then you've made a mistake.
Time to have a stiff drink in sympathy
Saddened of CharlburyThanks Geoffers, I had a very stiff drink before I posted, and then got maudlin.
You have reminded me that I did do a back up CD, though not as recently as I should have, so I may be able to salvage some of it.

The problem with print out copies is that my filing system, and my room, is so overloaded, that there is not even enough room for me, let alone the dog. She is very worried that her basket may be taken over for spill-over storage!

I have definitely learnt from this mistake!:o

[Clive Blackaby]

Hi Patrisia,

I certainly commiserate - so embarrassing when you do things like that isn't it. About 15 years ago I did something similar at work: only I typed the equivalent of "delete *.*" The thing only stopped when it tried to delete the program that does the deletion :(. Fortunately we had a backup.

I don't want to give you false hope, but often although the computer says that your files are permanently deleted they are still there, but they've gone from the index tables that allow the operating system to find them. It also makes the space available so they eventually disappear altogether by being overwritten.

There is technolology out there that, for example, fraud investigators use to recover supposedly deleted data. I don't know how they do it, but it may be worth a try. Don't do anything like reorganising or defragmenting your disks until you've given it a try. I know that at one time Norton Utilities had a file recovery facility, but not used it for a good many years, so it may not be available now. Try asking a small local computer shop.

Don't despair YET :)

[Patrisia]

[QUOTE=Mythology]Oh 'eck! !!:eek:

I wondered what you were cheesed off about in your last e-mail - now I know. :(

As an *immediate* solution, I can only do the same as Geoffers and suggest a whole bottle of Sloe Gin followed by a dozen large Rum & Shrubs.
(Please note - I do not accept any responsibility for your PC being washed up on the Irish coast tomorrow morning as a result of following this advice)

If you have a CD writer, and buy cheap CDs in bulk at about 10p a time, burning the whole lot to CD once in a while isn't expensive.
I know you can't use password protection in your webspace with your ISP, but if you still have plenty of space left, that's another possibility - just upload the lot now and then for safe keeping.
QUOTE]
Thanks for the advice Myth, yes it is the CD I am going to try - when the fumes have cleared!
But you know what it's like; something comes up and you think 'that rings a bell', so you trawl through all the flotsam and jetsam that has accumulated, for that odd bit of something that you filed away in the year dot, for a rainy day.

Speaking of flotsam and jetsam, the tide is out, so the Irish coast is safe from my wrath!

[Chasing Caseys]

Thats a point as Clive sort of mentions......would system restore bring back Patricias files as i know it has for me in the past without me losing anything recently added?

[Patrisia]

Thanks everyone, wiping away a tear!:)
I am now going to watch some mindless TV, with (yet) another glass of something, before I venture a look at the back up CD. Though what I really need is a large comforting bar of luxury dark chocolate!

[Chasing Caseys]

Patrisia

Please please try system restore before you give up. It does bring back files, being the idiot that i am i have done it many times and is worth a try and i havent lost any added data. You can put your pc back to exactly how it was yesterday or whenever you chose. Although i am no pc expert i can only tell you what worked for me :)

[Mythology]

Unfortunately not. "System Restore" basically does what it says on the tin - it puts your *system* back to where it was, as the note on mine says "without causing you to lose recent work, such as saved documents, e-mail, or history and favourites lists."

You'd need something else for getting back overwritten files - Clive's right, such things do exist, but I've never used them so don't know enough about them to offer any specific suggestions. I suspect that there's probably some cash involved, and a *decent* local PC shop might be cheaper for a one-off.

[Chasing Caseys]

Hello Mythology
We posted at the same time. If Patrisia lost files today and did a system restore point for sometime yesterday would that not bring what she lost back ? I have found this did it for me. But as i say im no pc expert and when anything goes wrong im straight on the phone to pc world helpline :D

[Mythology]

There are "files" and there are "files".
Grossly oversimplified ...
If it was something like a *program* which you installed, and it turned out be a nightmare, system restore would reverse the changes.
If it was something like text files, it would not - that would be defeating the object of allowing you to restore your system to where it was without losing your recent work.
Rather like, as you said in your message earlier, "I havent lost any added data."
If system restore literally put you back to where you were in every respect, you would have lost that added data, wouldn't you?
Added or overwritten is basically the same thing - you won't lose your new version of that document that you spent hours altering.
But in Patrisia's case, we *want* to lose the new data and bring back the old, and that is precisely what it won't do.

[Chasing Caseys]

Hello Mythology

I can only say my pc is as basic as the day it was bought. The only added things are what i have had to download in order to view things and Legacy family tree. So many people send me stuff that they have composed by using so many different types of complicated software that unless the reciprocator (me) has it installed (at my expense which i refuse to get) its completely useless for me to view.
I have deleted files by mistake ( maybe thats where i have misread and Patrisias files have gone without her deleting )and thought " OH **** " and have recovered the deleted stuff via system restore not the recycle bin as i had emptied it. It was just a thought for Patrisia but it seems a hopeless one.

[Terry]

Patrisia, there is some free recovery software available. Suggest you do a Google search using "file recovery software"
Just make sure it is freeware and not shareware that you download

[Patrisia]

Thanks every one for your sympathy and suggestions. I'm afraid the over-written files are lost, unless I spend money on a programme that may not work, so I'm cutting my losses.

I have found my back up CD, so some of it has been retrieved, but I'm ashamed to say how old it is! |blush|
So the task before bed time is, doing a back up - now!

[coenmfam]

Oh dear
my sympathies
I'm currently chasing an e-mail I think I deleted
but I think I would have a meltdown if I did something like that

Here is a link to an Un-delete programme
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Kaus/homepage.htm

but I'm afraid that probably wont work in this case
these sorts of programmes have to be installed before the accident
not after
as the process of installation may overwrite any data
you are trying to recover

here is a link to a PC World article on data recovery
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,119994,00.asp
its very interesting

Nev

[Mythology]

To say that I am no expert on file recovery programs would be an understatement, but .......

I did a Google as per Terry's suggestion and read the info on *some* of the links - not all of them, so I might have missed something, and I might be misinterpreting something anyway.

I also had a look at that PC World article.

It all seems to refer to recovering *deleted* files, e.g. in the first bit of that article, "If a data-recovery program can find the files before they're overwritten, you have an excellent chance of restoring your data."

In Patrisia's case, it is overwritten files that she needs to recover the old versions of.

[Diane Grant-Salmon]

Oh Patrisia ....... I've only just read your message this morning. I'm so sorry that this has happened and I understand how upset you are about losing a lot of your information.

You have my email address, so just drop me a line if I can be of assistance in any way. ;)

[Ken Boyce]

Sometimes it is possible to restore stuff thats been overwitten

Download, install and run a small free utility called "PC Inspector File Recovery"

You have to be computer savvy to use it

Good luck

[AnnB]

I've only just got around to reading this Patrisia, I know how I'd feel in your shoes :(

One small word of advice, if you are going to attempt any sort of recovery exercise, wait until you head clears from the sorrow drowning yesterday ;)

I'll have a glass or two on your behalf later :D

Best wishes
Ann

[busyglen]

Patrisia, I'm SO sorry for you....if that had been me I would have been frightened to touch the pc again for ages!!

In actual fact, I did a very stupid thing over a year ago....I completely deleted (by clicking too many times) the whole of my web site folder whilst trying to update it!!
And.....of course, I hadn't backed it up! I was lucky in that although a lot of hard work was involved, I was able to copy and paste everything back into a new folder and re-link everything. You can be sure that I now back-up everything!

I really don't know how I would have coped with your problem....well, except to say that I would have had a very, very, big headache the next day. :(

I hope that you manage to salvage at least `some' of your work, as `overwriting' is definately not the same as `deleting'!!

Good luck.

Glenys

[Fulhamster]

Hi Patrisia,
I cannot think of words to say how sorry I am that you have lost so much information. I just hope that you have saved more than you think you have.

[BeeE586]

Something similar happened to me. Possibly, if we were honest, most of us would admit to having had a disaster of some sort on one or more occasions.

My hard drive was divided into three parts and I was still working with floppies as, although that computer could read CD's I could not save to them. I worked in one part of the drive and saved two files which were too big for floppies in each of the other two. I was always GOING to get a CD writer, but never did, and what happened ? a total crash with nothing recoverable.

All the smaller files were backed up on the floppies, but I lost my master database which contained every scrap of information from every register I had ever looked at for every one of my names, and my complete 'tree.' Fortunately I still had the paper records in several lever arch files from my pre-computer days, and even though this happened about five years ago, I still haven't caught up. I wept.

Eileen