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How do you find old email messages that have been deleted on Yahoo?

Yahoo Mail’s Trash Folder

Yahoo Mail, like many Web-based e-mail systems, offers a dedicated folder where deleted e-mail messages reside temporarily before being permanently deleted. In Yahoo’s case, this folder is aptly named the “Trash” folder. If you’ve recently deleted the messages, the Trash folder should be your first destination. However, messages can be removed from the Trash folder at any time by Yahoo, so even if you haven’t emptied it, Yahoo may have.

Once deleted from the Trash folder, these messages are gone for good (at least from Yahoo’s mail servers).

Recovering Local Copies of Yahoo Mail

If you have set up Yahoo Mail to download locally such as via POP3 access to Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail, then your options are more plentiful. Programs such as Outlook Express download the mail from online servers and save a copy of the messages on your computer. Even if you deleted the file online, if Outlook Express had previously downloaded it, then the message will be available on your computer. If you deleted the message locally, check your Deleted Items folder in see if it’s still available.

Using Data Recovery to Recover Local Copies of Yahoo Mail

If you have accessed the messages on your local computer, there’s a small chance that a data recovery product such as Data Recovery Pro can find and recover the deleted temporary files associated with viewing the Yahoo Mail on your computer. While this product does not specifically support Web-based e-mail accounts, you might try the free scanner tool to create a custom search using the term “yahoo” as part of the criteria. It’s a long shot, but worth trying.

Using Privacy Controls to View Web History  

Another option is to run the Privacy Controls scanner tool on your computer and see if you can view the deleted emails via the Internet Browsing History or Instant Messaging features. While this won’t recover the emails for you, it will reveal if they are viewable on your computer and should give you the path to the files so that you can then navigate to them individually.

Web-based e-mail is convenient in that you can access it from any Internet-connected computer. However, once e-mail has been deleted, if you don’t have a local copy, you may be out of luck.

I have a Coby 256MB flash drive that has all of my school projects on it. It is not responding when I insert it into the computer. I, was wondering if you could help.

Try a Reboot

Sometimes rebooting your computer will allow it to recognize a USB flash drive. Start by inserting the drive, then power the computer down, let it rest for a minute, then boot it back up. Log onto Windows and see if the computer can recognize the drive now. For some reason, some computers sometimes fail to see a USB drive. You might try the USB drive on another computer and see if it shows up there.

Look in My Computer

The USB flash drive should show up in the My Computer listings. Double click the My Computer icon to open, and look for the USB flash drive. If it isn’t listed, you can try updating or removing and reinstalling the UBS drivers. If it is listed, then the problem is likely the drive itself, and you might need to replace it.

Update and Reinstall Drivers

1. Click Start, then Control Panel
2. Choose System, then Hardware
3. Choose Device Manager then find the USB controllers in the list
4. Right click the USB controllers listing and choose Update
5. If you need to, right click and uninstall the drivers
6. Leave the USB flash drive plugged in and reboot the computer, it should automatically reload the drivers

Assign the Drive Letter

Another tip is to check the drive letter assignments and see if this helps the computer identify the drive.

1. Click Start, then Control Panel
2. Choose Performance and Maintenance. If you are running Classic view skip to the next step
3. Choose Administrative Tools
4. Click twice on Computer Management
5. On the left side of the screen, click Disk Management
6. Now, find the drive, partition, logical drive or volume that you want to assign a letter to - find the listing for the UBS port/flash drive - and right click it
7. Choose Add
8. Choose Assign the Following Drive Letter
9. Click to Accept, or click the drive letter that you want to assign
10. Click OK
11. Look again for the drive listing to open the USB drive

Try Data Recovery Software

If the flash drive is recognized on your computer as a drive letter but appears to be unformatted or empty, try data recovery software to see if your files are recoverable. Data Recovery from ParetoLogic Software offers a free scanner that will let you see if the files are recoverable. If so, the full featured product will need to be purchased.

Back Up your Data

Unfortunately, sometimes USB flash drives die. They aren’t the most reliable storage device and you should always back up documents that you save on them on a CD or DVD. Some users have had luck getting the USB memory chip repaired by a technician, but there is no way to know whether or not this will work. I hope that you can get to your files! Good luck!

Is there a way to retrieve a previous saved file?

Find Out If You Need Recovery Software

As long as you haven’t deleted the file from your computer, there is probably a way to find and recover a previously saved version. If you have already emptied the contents of the Recycle Bin, then you will need to buy some more advanced data retrieval software to recover the missing file like Paretologic’s Data Recovery.

Search your Computer

The first step is to look for the original file document and hope that it is still on your computer.

1. Click Start, the Search
2. On the lower left side of the window, choose Click Here to Use Search Companion
3. On the Search Companion screen, choose All Files and Folders
4. In the box called All Or Part of the File Name Box, type in the name of the file that you are looking for
5. In the Look In box, choose My Computer, and then Search

Check the Recycle Bin

If you have deleted the file from your documents or from your desktop, then you might be able to recover it from the Recycle Bin.

1. Click twice on Recycle Bin on the desktop
2. Under the View Menu, choose Details
3. Click Arrange Icons By
4. Choose Date Deleted
5. Scroll through and look for your missing file. If you find it, right click then choose Restore

Search for a Backup Copy

If not, and if the missing file is a Word Document, you can look for a saved backup copy. In Word 2007:

1.  
   • Click the Microsoft Office Button
   • Choose Word Options
   • Click Advanced
   • Scroll down to the Save section
   • Check if the Always Create a Backup setting is selected
   • If so, there is a backup
   • If not, you might want to change this setting now for the future

If the setting is selected, the backup file will be saved in the same location as the original but will have a .wbk extension instead of the usual .doc Word extension. If not, go back and repeat the steps to Search Your Computer and enter *.wbk in the Search box.

Search for a Temporary File

If you are still looking, you can try to find a version of the file in your temporary files.

1. Follow the instructions above to Search Your Computer
2. In the All Or Part of the File Name box type in *.TMP
3. Then follow the same directions as above to search the computer

I hope these tips work! Good luck!

My 12-year-old put a security password on a “SanDisk” U3 micro 4GB memory stick. I used the password 3 times and now it has locked me out and I have a lot of family photos on it. How can I open the stick and download the pictures? How can I save them so they do not delete? Please help.

SanDisk U3 Micro Memory Stick Passwords

Unfortunately, according to the SanDisk support pages, you cannot access any data from your U3 flash drive without the previously set password. If you are unable to recover, remember or otherwise locate your password, the only option that you have is to reformat the drive, and lose any data saved there.

Before we go further, humor me and try rebooting your computer with the memory stick inserted in its drive. I read an anonymous tip that rebooting with the stick in the drive and AutoPlay turned off allows you to access the drive without the password prompt. It may or may not work, but it’s worth a try.

Get Technical Assistance

I’m not an expert in passwords and accessing locked data, but I would say, before deleting your photos, that you look for the services of a technician who might be able to hack the drive. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t suggest that users circumnavigate security procedures, but I am quite sure that you aren’t interested in hacking the drive to access stolen material. In addition, password recovery tools are on the market and may work on your Sandisk Memory Stick.

Data Recovery software may also bypass the security tools. Try the free Data Recovery Scanner tool and see if it can detect your photos on your Memory Stick. If so, you’ll need to upgrade to the full featured product to recover the photos. If you must reformat the Sandisk Memory stick, try the data recovery scan after reformatting as well.

Formatting your Memory Stick

The SanDick support pages also say that the drive should give you 99 attempts to enter the correct password before locking your drive and forcing you to format it. In trying to remember or guess the password, you can try to use the SanDisk hint feature. Ask your son if he set a hint when he enabled password protection. If so, you can click Hint in the SanDisk drive log in window and it will reveal the hint that was chosen. With the hint you, or your son, might remember the password.

Backup your Data to Hard Drive and CD

While SanDisk makes flash drives that many people use to store and back up data, the company recommends that users always keep data backed up on their hard drives for safe keeping. If you are able to get the flash drive open, you can save the data on your hard drive, and even make a back up to CD to be extra safe. When the drive is open, click the files with your mouse to select all and drag them onto your desktop. You can either drop them there or save them in your photo folder. To burn them to a disk put a writable disk in the drive and wait for the empty disk folder to open then drag and drop the files here. Good luck!

I had a Toshiba laptop that crashed, so I bought a Sony Vaio … but I still need to recover all the files that were on the hard drive in the Toshiba. I was going to take it to a data recovery company but was told that by using an Icy Box I could recover the data myself and make use of the spare hard drive; so I bought one. I connected my hard drive to the Icy Box and then to my laptop. Messages came up identifying the new hardware and stating that it is ready to use. I clicked the Computer tab and saw that there was in fact no new drive. I tried using the Icy Box and old hard drive in a PC that runs on XP and the same problem occurred there. I also restarted both the laptop and the PC and the old hard drive was still not usable.

I’ve edited your question, but you had a lot of good information in there. Even though you say you don’t know much about computers, you are definitely on the right track. You’re right, you DON’T want to reformat the drive as that will erase all of the valuable data that you are trying to recover. It shouldn’t be that hard to get to your data, so let’s look at our options.

External Hard Drive

The IcyBox is an external hard drive enclosure that is used to pull data off of a drive or for extra storage. To use it, you take the old drive out of your laptop and put it in the external hard drive, then hook that up to your working computer using either a USB port, FireWire or SATA. It sounds as if you have already checked to see that it is not the USB port, as the external drive also does not work when attached to a different computer. Although the IcyBox is new, it’s possible that it is defective. Can you get a refund or replacement on that particular unit? If so, I would try a different one and see if the drive will be recognized by your computer.

Use as a Slave Drive

Using an external hard drive enclosure should be the easiest way to go, but you can also set your old hard drive up as a slave in a working computer so that you can pull the data off of it. Here is a basic outline of the process:

1. Shut down the computer and unplug it.
2. Open the case of the working computer.
3. Find the jumper somewhere on the top of the defective drive. You want to set the jumper to “slave”.
4. Put the drive into an empty bay in the computer.
5. Now find the hard drive cable and connect the very end of the cable to the slave drive and connect the middle of the cable to the drive that was already in the computer.
6. Now connect the power connector and put the case back on.
7. Boot up and try to recover your data.

There is a nicely detailed set of instructions complete with video and photos on the DTI Data tutorial website. This is another option for you if you don’t want to go through the trouble of getting a new external hard drive enclosure.
In any case, your data should be recoverable using one of these methods.

Two or three picture folders are missing from the hard drive. I have performed every search task including undelete programs without success. The folders are not in the Recycle Bin and were never deleted (not intentionally anyway). Is there anything I can do without spending large amounts of money on technicians without any guarantee of recovery? I will be grateful if you can give me some advice in this matter.

Missing Folders

The other day, I accidentally dragged and dropped a folder into another folder, which made it seem as if the folder had disappeared. I’m wondering if something like this may have happened to you. With that in mind, let’s see if we can’t find the photo folders before moving on to data recovery tools.

If you know the name of any of the missing file names within the folders, then that would be helpful though I understand it’s difficult to remember. But if you have a general idea, we can use that. For example, if the photos are Christmas photos, and you think you might have named them with a descriptive name such as “Christmas 2008″ we can do a wildcard search for files containing the word “Christmas.”

Open Windows Explorer by right-clicking the Start button and choosing Explore. Now, click on the main drive (this tells Windows where to search) before entering your search term in the Search box. In the example above, type in: *Christmas*.jpg

The asterisks are wildcard characters while the .jpg is the file extension most commonly used for photos. With this particular term, jpg photo files containing the word Christmas will be listed such as “kidsChristmaspics.jpg” or “Christmas003.jpg.” Any results will be displayed along with the path to the folder where the file is located.

Check the Search Tools settings of Explorer to make sure that all subfolders are being searched as well. To make this adjustment, click Search Tools > Search Options and make the selection.

Using Windows Photo Gallery to Find Lost Photos

If you have Windows Vista, then you can use Windows Photo Gallery to sort photos and find lost photos. If the original photo folder has been moved to a subfolder, you will be able to find the photos themselves and then determine the path and their location based on the date the photos were taken.

For example, if you know that the missing photos are from your summer trip to Italy in 2007, go into Windows Photo Gallery and scroll down the left side pane until you get to the Date Taken section. You’ll see a list of years. Click the year in question and it will expand to show the months. In the main pane, you’ll see thumbnails of the corresponding photos. In this example, you’d click on 2007 and then start browsing through the summer months until you find your Italian vacation photos.

Once you find one of the missing photos, right-click it and choose Properties. From there, you can view the exact folder location.

Using Data Recovery Tools

The above two options assumed that the folders have been moved rather than deleted. If you still cannot find the photo folders and believe that they have indeed been deleted, then a data recovery program might help. We recommend Data Recovery from Paretologic for two reasons: it’s effective and it includes a free scan that lets you see if the folder is recoverable before you have to buy the product. Download the free data recovery scan tool and let it run. This tool categorizes deleted files by type, so look under the Photo section to see if your lost photo folders have been found. If so, then you can purchase the product for about $40 or $50 (depending on which version you choose) and recover the photos.