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A few days ago, I took some family pictures in my camera and then downloaded them to my PC. Soon after, they were overwritten by some other photographs by mistake. Can I recover my earlier photos back?

Searching for Lost Photos

My first question is about the overwritten photos. I assume you mean that the photos on the PC are no longer there and were replaced by a new set of photos? Or do you mean the photos in the camera were overwritten when you took newer photos? The first thing I would do is double check the photo folder on your computer to be sure that they aren’t really there. For example, did you know that you can sort your images by date rather than name? Since you know the photos were taken a few days ago, it should be fairly easy to sort the photo folder by date and then scan through the list to see if they appear. Here’s how:

• Right-click the Start button and choose Explore
• Navigate to the photo storage folder, typically labeled My Pictures or Pictures (if you store your photos elsewhere, navigate to that folder)
• Click the dropdown arrow next to View and select the view that you prefer. For example, if you want to see a small preview of the image, select medium icon.
• Now, click the Date Taken box, this will sort all images in the file based on date. Clicking it again toggles it from ascending to descending order. If you know the exact date, click the dropdown box next to Date Taken and select the date on the calendar. This will filter the images to only those that were taken on the selected date.

Any luck?  

Recovering Photos

Once you confirm that the photos are not there, the next step is to check your digital camera. Many photo transfer programs delete the photos from the camera once downloaded, so they may be deleted. Not to worry! It is possible to recover your earlier photos with data recovery software. Data recovery software works on hard drives as well as peripheral devices such as digital cameras so long as you can connect the camera or its memory card to your computer and view its contents as a drive letter such as the E:\ drive.

Data recovery software typically costs about $30-$40, so you’ll need to weigh the value of the photos against the cost of the software. We recommend ParetoLogic Data Recovery software. In this case, you do not need the “Pro” version as the standard version does a fine job of recovering photos. What’s neat about this software is that you can download a free scanner version to find out if your photos are recoverable from either your digital camera or your hard drive. If the scanner finds the photos, you will then need to purchase the full version to recover them. On the other hand, if the photos are not recoverable, you will not have spent any money on a fruitless search.

The software is easy to use. I would start with scanning the digital camera. If the photos aren’t found there, then try the hard drive. Data recovery works on a basic principle: when data is deleted, it isn’t deleted until new data occupies its address on the disk or media; only the entry to the file and graphical pointers to it are removed. It’s like tearing out the table of contents of a book. Just because the table of contents page is gone, the chapters remain.

My computer was recently “fixed” by a friend who said he could not recover my Word documents or any files on the hard drive. He said it was a “partition” problem. Can files be retrieved from a corrupted or crashed hard drive? I’m a church pastor and lost all my sermons. Any help you can offer is appreciated!

The short answer to your question is that yes, in many cases you will be able to recover Word documents and files from a corrupted or crash hard drive. You’ll just need some special software. Read on to discover what you need to do to retrieve your sermons.

Data Recovery Software

Data recovery software is designed to recover lost or missing data from computer hard drives. In particular, this type of software can retrieve documents and files of many types provided they have not been overwritten with new data. This includes Word documents, emails, images, music, folders, applications, and more.

Overwritten Documents

Each time you write new documents, they take up space on the storage media. If you have deleted any documents, it is possible that they will be written over with the new data. If the document that you want to retrieve has been written over with new data, then it will no longer exist and you won’t be able to retrieve it.

How Does Data Recovery Software Work?

Once you download and install data recovery software, you can use it to scan your computer to recover Word documents, files, images, videos, and other data. In many instances, you are able to select the type of data that you wish to recover. You can also recover previously deleted documents and files as long as they haven’t been overwritten with new data. Therefore, not only should you be able to retrieve any files that you have stored on the hard drive, but you should also be able to recover files that you might have recently deleted or accidentally lost. Not only can you recover files individually, you can also recover entire folders and partitions.

ParetoLogic Data Recovery Pro

One data recovery application that I have personally used and can recommend is Data Recovery by ParetoLogic Software. This link will take you to a free trial scanner that will provide you with a list recoverable files found on your computer. If the scanner finds your lost sermons, in order to recover them, you will need to purchase the fully featured product. It’s about $40 or $50 depending on which version you choose. ParetoLogic Data Recovery is designed to recover hard drives that have crashed, lost partitions, the emptied contents of the Recycle Bin, formatted media, and more. The Pro version adds e-mail recovery.

You can choose to recover only those documents that you need or you can recover everything. It’s important that you have sufficient room to save your recovered work as well. One tip that I might add is to make a back up copy of all of your sermons on CDs so that you have them should you experience another problem with your computer’s hard drive.

I have Vista and did a recovery with automatic data backup. Did I lose my photos or are they saved somewhere? How can I find them? Please help!

If you selected automatic data backup, then your photos have been saved and stored as long as you selected “pictures” as one of the file types that you wanted to save. Just to make sure I cover all angles for you, I am going to briefly go over a few things and provide solutions that should work to recover your photos.

Vista Backup with Data Recovery

Windows Vista makes backing up data easy with the special built-in feature that allows data recovery. In fact, users are offered four important ways to secure the existence of data including backing up the computer, backing up files, restoring files, and restoring the computer.

File Backup Wizard in Windows Vista

When you use the File Backup Wizard in Windows Vista, it prompts you with:

• Which files you want to back up
• Where you want to store the files (CD, DVD, server, hard disk, external hard disk)
• When you want to run the backup

Data Backup in Windows Vista

When Windows Vista backs up files, it saves them as zip files. The backup feature in Vista places the data it saves into a series of zip folders, each of which have a maximum capacity of 200 MB. The files are labeled in this way: “Backup files 2.zip,” “Backup files 3.zip,” etc. Vista backup saves files of similar type to the same zip whenever possible. Therefore, your photos should be located together in one or more zip folders.

How to Locate Your Data Backup in Windows Vista

If you want to locate your photos, then you need to open the media used for the data backup (CD, DVD, server, hard disk, external hard disk.) Next, you need to browse through the zip folders until you locate the files that you want. The file extension will be the same as the original file extension. Common file extensions for images include: .gif, .bmp, .jpeg, .png, and .tiff.

Each of the files within the zip folder will have the same name. Therefore, you will probably want to extract and save all of them to a new folder that you create on your desktop. Give the folder a name that will help you to recognize its contents.

Rename each file when you save it to its new folder so that you don’t end up with 10 files of the same name.

Data and Photo Recovery

If your photos seem to be missing, you can use a data recovery application for photo recovery. I can recommend DataRecovery, an application that can retrieve all sorts of missing data files including photos.

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.