Over-witten Files, Recovery?

[Maroochydore]

I keep back-ups of home accounts on a stick. I don't know what happened but I seem to have over-written the up-to-date files on my computer when I accessed the stick.

I have tried system recovery back to the last restore point of 19 February which would be good enough for me.

However system recovery failed as it said files can't be accessed due to anti-virus software. So I disabled the AV, ran it again but got the same message.

I suspect I'm going to have to try and re-build the files as best I can but does anyone know if it's possible to find pre-over-written copies lurking anywhere on my system?

Edit: If it makes any difference they are Libre Office files.

[pje16]

If you have previous versions switched on (a long shot but worth a look)
Right click ob any folder, select Properties and there will be a previous version tab
if it is enabled you will snapshots of that folder at various times
it does wok on files but I find folders to be more reliable

[Maroochydore]

If you have previous versions switched on (a long shot but worth a look)
Right click ob any folder, select Properties and there will be a previous version tab
if it is enabled you will snapshots of that folder at various times
it does wok on files but I find folders to be more reliable

Regrettably previous versions not activated. generally because I back up to stick.
Thanks anyway.

[pje16]

Regrettably previous versions not activated. generally because I back up to stick.
Thanks anyway.

Sorry to hear that, it is worth turning on (i know, but no-one gets a burglar alarm until they've been burgled)
I back mine up to Google drive (just started this year) approx £15 pa, well worth it
and 2 external drives
Can you guess I got bitten once a few years ago

[Redmires]

You've probably searched online for help and found the same as myself. Backup copies are kept in a backup directory BUT only if you have 'always create backup' configured. If so, they will be stored here

C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\4\user\backup

https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/how-to-re ... ument/1935

If not, then the only thing I can suggest is to try 'Recuva' recovery program, but this is more for deleted files than overwritten. You never know though.

EDIT: I've just configured 'always create backup' in my Libre Office setup and it does work, creating a name.bak file in the backup directory. Might save myself some future grief.

[mc2fool]

Not any help to you now, but for future I really strongly recommend keeping your personal files in one of the synced cloud services folders.

You can work exactly as you do now, just instead putting your folders/files into a different folder (tree) on your PC. E.g. if you use Google Drive (15GB for free) you simply put all your files and folders into the Google Drive folder on your PC instead of into the Documents folder.

If you're worried about Google, or anyone breaking into Google, reading your files then I recommend https://www.sync.com/ which is a zero knowledge end-to-end encrypted service, which means your data gets encrypted by your PC on the fly as it uploads and decrypted by your PC on the fly as it downloads. They give you 5GB for free, and in their case you put your files etc into the Sync folder on your PC.

The great things about both services are that:

a) they provide off-site automatic backups of your files, so if your house burns down taking your PCs and sticks with it, you'll still have your data.
b) both have file versioning and deleted file recovery, so you can not only recover deleted files but also go back to previous versions of files.
c) you can access your data from elsewhere, including other PCs and Android phones (and maybe more, that's just what I use!), and over the web.

I use both Google Drive (for non-private stuff) and Sync.com (for the private and secure stuff), and I keep all of my personal files in them and run them both on both my desktop and laptop, so I can change from working on one to the other work on the same files on either. I also use them both selectively (just some files/folders) on my phone.

Setup for both is easy. There's also Microsoft's OneDrive and others that I haven't looked into that work similarly.

[XFool]

You've probably searched online for help and found the same as myself. Backup copies are kept in a backup directory BUT only if you have 'always create backup' configured. If so, they will be stored here

C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\4\user\backup

Interesting. I didn't know that.

[Tedx]

A nice cup of tea and a lie down should help.

[scrumpyjack]

I very much endorse using OneDrive or Dropbox etc as you aut0matically get old versions kept for perhaps 30 days.

The other thing I used to do before putting everything on Onedrive was to email files to myself, that way you keep copies in gmail.

[UncleEbenezer]

If you have a journaling filesystem, you may be able to boot up into a historic version from before your accident. Then make a backup from there.

Otherwise, there are recovery tools that may find files where the data are unlinked (i.e. don't appear in your filesystem) but not overwritten. This is likely to be a difficult job as metadata (the names of files, and their position in your directory structure) won't be available.

In other circumstances, file recovery presents a security risk. If you can recover files, so can a spy who gains access to your disc (that's why you see advice about destroying old drives in the fires of Mount Doom). Modern filesystems can protect you against that (likely if you've ever selected high security settings), in which case you can forget about recovery.

[NomoneyNohoney]

I have just posted about using portable apps, and one very useful utility is Recuva.
Have a read here :- https://filehippo.com/download_recuva-portable/

[Maroochydore]

Thanks to all for the responses. I have to rebuild the files laboriously using downloaded .csv files from banks etc and other various bits of info detected by various means.

I've learnt my lesson!

[Mike4]

I keep back-ups of home accounts on a stick. I don't know what happened but I seem to have over-written the up-to-date files on my computer when I accessed the stick.
.

Can you expand on what you mean by this please? when i use a memory stick there is no opportunity to overwrite unless I delete some files first. Do you mean you actually manually deleted some files you later found you need?

When files are 'deleted', the data remains on the disk AIUI. It's just the root record of where the files reside that is deleted so provided you haven't written anything new to the memory stick, I think your data is probably still there. There are loads of firms making a living from recovering 'deleted' files, if they are valuable enough to you to spend a few (or a lot of) bob getting them back.

This may be hopelessly out of date!

[servodude]

I keep back-ups of home accounts on a stick. I don't know what happened but I seem to have over-written the up-to-date files on my computer when I accessed the stick.
.

Can you expand on what you mean by this please? when i use a memory stick there is no opportunity to overwrite unless I delete some files first. Do you mean you actually manually deleted some files you later found you need?

When files are 'deleted', the data remains on the disk AIUI. It's just the root record of where the files reside that is deleted so provided you haven't written anything new to the memory stick, I think your data is probably still there. There are loads of firms making a living from recovering 'deleted' files, if they are valuable enough to you to spend a few (or a lot of) bob getting them back.

This may be hopelessly out of date!

Nup. That all sounds about right.

Filesystems will generally use "free" space before overwriting or erasing (because it's quicker and simpler) and just redirect the user to that new location under the covers.

There was a link to recuva earlier https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva/download - which has saved me a few times in the past if stuff has got borked

On at least one other occasion I've also used https://www.reclaime.com/ for when it was a job that recuva couldn't do (like reassembling the interleaved RAID disk from two different m2 drives after the controller board had died)

The first rule is stop using the disc as soon as you think you want to try and recover anything on it to reduce the chances of overwriting
After that - run recuva on it and see what it suggests - it can't hurt and it can be interesting to see what stuff from eons ago it never got round to writing over

-sd

[BobbyD]

Found Recuva very hit and miss*. Ran a scan with a trial version of EaseUS data recovery wizard on an old drive a while back, appeared to give much better results, with previews available to see what is and isn't recoverable. Really should go back and see if any of the files from the (savable) search are worth stumping up for the 1 year license.

https://www.easeus.com/

* Which is to say a lot of the stuff it recovered either wasn't what it said it was, or wasn't openable presumably either because of an incorrect filr type or the file actually wasn't recoverable.

[Maroochydore]

I keep back-ups of home accounts on a stick. I don't know what happened but I seem to have over-written the up-to-date files on my computer when I accessed the stick.
.

Can you expand on what you mean by this please? when i use a memory stick there is no opportunity to overwrite unless I delete some files first. Do you mean you actually manually deleted some files you later found you need?

OK - just to clarify. Current files (tax, bank, pensions etc) are worked on via the desktop.

Files are backed up 'occasionally' to a stick in case of computer crash.

When I put the stick into the USB slot and went to drag the up-to-date files to the stick - which would over-write the files already on the stick with up-to date data - the reverse seems to have happened, the files on the desktop have been over-written with old data from the stick.

Now it could be I dragged the wrong way around but whenever files are overwritten I get a warning, which didn't happen. No files were deleted, they just had the data over-written.

Hope that clarifies the situation.

[BobbyD]

I keep back-ups of home accounts on a stick. I don't know what happened but I seem to have over-written the up-to-date files on my computer when I accessed the stick.
.

Can you expand on what you mean by this please? when i use a memory stick there is no opportunity to overwrite unless I delete some files first. Do you mean you actually manually deleted some files you later found you need?

OK - just to clarify. Current files (tax, bank, pensions etc) are worked on via the desktop.

Files are backed up 'occasionally' to a stick in case of computer crash.

When I put the stick into the USB slot and went to drag the up-to-date files to the stick - which would over-write the files already on the stick with up-to date data - the reverse seems to have happened, the files on the desktop have been over-written with old data from the stick.

Now it could be I dragged the wrong way around but whenever files are overwritten I get a warning, which didn't happen. No files were deleted, they just had the data over-written.

Hope that clarifies the situation.

Synctoy is unsupported now but you might find it, ir something like it a slightly more reliable method of ensuring the correct direction of travel.

Clicking on a confirmation box can be practically a reflex

[servodude]

I keep back-ups of home accounts on a stick. I don't know what happened but I seem to have over-written the up-to-date files on my computer when I accessed the stick.
.

Can you expand on what you mean by this please? when i use a memory stick there is no opportunity to overwrite unless I delete some files first. Do you mean you actually manually deleted some files you later found you need?

OK - just to clarify. Current files (tax, bank, pensions etc) are worked on via the desktop.

Files are backed up 'occasionally' to a stick in case of computer crash.

When I put the stick into the USB slot and went to drag the up-to-date files to the stick - which would over-write the files already on the stick with up-to date data - the reverse seems to have happened, the files on the desktop have been over-written with old data from the stick.

Now it could be I dragged the wrong way around but whenever files are overwritten I get a warning, which didn't happen. No files were deleted, they just had the data over-written.

Hope that clarifies the situation.

Synctoy is unsupported now but you might find it, ir something like it a slightly more reliable method of ensuring the correct direction of travel.

Clicking on a confirmation box can be practically a reflex

...or stuff glitches and it happens before you can stop it
ESPECIALLY on windows... I've found myself dragging the wrong thing more often than I ever thought I would; which prompts a hunt for the ESC key before I drop something in the wrong place! (In my defence I normally have ~3 pointing devices attached at any time)

I try and automate this stuff as much as makes sense for what I'm doing - a big "back up" button that runs a script, or using "previous versions" on a folder, or source control for stuff that wouldn't normally be in it, or beyondCompare rather than file-explorer, or oneDrive etc
I'm much less likely to do it on a command line (though I recently found a bash script that didn't check a removable folder existed before cd-ing to it and clearing everything older than a week - which would have cleared everything from the wrong place if the drive had been missing )
-sd

[Urbandreamer]

OK - just to clarify. Current files (tax, bank, pensions etc) are worked on via the desktop.

Files are backed up 'occasionally' to a stick in case of computer crash.

Can I recommend a few things.

1) don't use a USB stick for backups, They fail without warning and are designed as a cheap way to transfer data.
2) automate the backup process if possible. We all forget to do it.
3) consider backing up to more than one "place". By place I mean cloud or hard disk.
4) consider time discrete backups. Different backups as time progresses so that you can chose what date to restore from, or track changes in your data.
5) test that you can recover data at least once a year.

I confess that this is a bit "do as I say, not what I do". When I changed my computer I didn't automate my backup doing it maually. I also currently only keep one copy.

The "easiest" solution for the way you work may be to simply buy 5 USB sticks and backup to a different (labeled) one each time that you backup.

[Mike4]

I keep back-ups of home accounts on a stick. I don't know what happened but I seem to have over-written the up-to-date files on my computer when I accessed the stick.
.

Can you expand on what you mean by this please? when i use a memory stick there is no opportunity to overwrite unless I delete some files first. Do you mean you actually manually deleted some files you later found you need?

OK - just to clarify. Current files (tax, bank, pensions etc) are worked on via the desktop.

Files are backed up 'occasionally' to a stick in case of computer crash.

When I put the stick into the USB slot and went to drag the up-to-date files to the stick - which would over-write the files already on the stick with up-to date data - the reverse seems to have happened, the files on the desktop have been over-written with old data from the stick.

Now it could be I dragged the wrong way around but whenever files are overwritten I get a warning, which didn't happen. No files were deleted, they just had the data over-written.

Hope that clarifies the situation.

Now I know very little about computers compared to some on here but in my experience and thinking about it more carefully, absence of a warning that files are about to be overwritten just doesn't happen. Therefore I'm wondering if what actually happened is your most up-to-date files are still present but the files copied back from the USB stick did not overwrite but actually landed somewhere else on your hard disk, and both versions are now present.

Have you had a search of your whole hard disk for all instances of one of the filenames, say? Just to see what is actually there?

Or maybe as BobbyD suggested, you are so in the habit of clicking "OK" to the warning box that you clicked OK on auto-pilot and overwrote anyway.