PSA: Be careful with Shift+Delete

I just lost my last 100 PMs this way.

I usually save everything in all three available formats, then put them in a Zip file, and then delete the PMs from CPF to make room. Well, today I accidentally put them in a new folder instead. Now, when you send files to a Zip file, the files are available where you first saved them as well as in the Zip file. If you move files into a folder, however, that's the only place they'll be. So, when I saw that I'd put them in a folder instead of a Zip file, I Shift+Deleted the folder, thinking I'd just go to the original files and actually send them to a Zip file this time.

I realized my mistake about two seconds later.

After several hours with various file recovery programs, I gave up. My last 100 PMs are gone.

Man, I just hate losing data.

THINK BEFORE YOU DELETE.

If your running xp, have you tried system restore?

There are programs you can use to get your data back.

However i'm not certain they work with shift delete but I don't see why not.

I once lost 160GB of data due to hard drive corruption and 40gig by formatting the wrong hard drive. :laughing:

System Restore might work, but only if you set restore points, which I don't. I tried a couple other programs, but they didn't find the lost folder. I just wanted this story to be out there as a caution to others.

TigerhawkT3 said:

System Restore might work, but only if you set restore points, which I don't. I tried a couple other programs, but they didn't find the lost folder. I just wanted this story to be out there as a caution to others.

Click to expand...

System restore does in fact create a restore point daily. I use shift+delete alot just to bypass the recycle bin. I guess I should be more careful as it has become a habit.

I've experimented on recovering shift-deletes in the past and got it to work with "drive rescue" (a freebie that's no longer available, but there's something else under another name that's the same thing - maybe google it.) Just tried it and it works. Shift deleting is really not a good idea at all unless you're sure what you're doing - you can always empty the recycle bin on some kind of schedule if you're worried about space. Of course, you thought you were sure of what you were doing ...

None of them are any good if you wait at all - overwriting and all that - but if you get right to it, success is high.

I didn't know you could actually save PMs

ouch....done that before
on my old computer I used to bypass the trash bin and lost alot of data before...now I give second thoughts...make a backup before doing anything that your not sure about

A freeware app called Undelete Plus has a pretty good reputation and can be used for locating recoverable files and recovering them.

Yep, that was the second one I tried. It didn't find the files, though. While it would've been cool to recover them, it was one of my easier-to-accept data losses.

I should probably also say that if you're in Unix/Linux, be careful with rm *, and similar variations.

remind me of the test i had lastweek on C++ programing.

typed finish the program finally!!!!
then i pressed ctrl + C to copy the program to submit(after checking that the program works of course)
then, wastematter happens and the file when poof.
the sad thing was that our test was using linux on a cd, with the RAM as our storage space. so i could not recover the thing.... no undo no nothing.

luckily for the paper i wrote it out on.