Calling all IT Experts

[cenote]

Just wondering, before I have a total melt down, it there a way to bring back an old file on a hard drive that you "accidentally" copied over?

Was doing my weekly back-ups, and I did a stupid mistake (no alcohol involved), and dragged the wrong directory from one hard drive to anther, so I copied my old sequences that were two weeks old, on top of my new sequences. Thankfully, it was only one song I worked on, and only a weeks worth, just wondering if there is a hidden file somewhere on the drive that gets made before you over write the old file?

Boy, sure would of been nice if LOR had that little option written in to create the .bak file into another location automatically..

Thanks, Chuck

[DownTown]

The LOR sequence editor DOES create .bak files of the sequences but not in a separate folder.... but it's pretty much impossible to predict and prevent every possible stupid user trick. Good luck getting your sequence back.

Years ago when I was a geek (now I'm just a curmudgeon), we used to have "undelete" programs that would undelete files that had accidentally been erased. They restored the directory entry, and as long as the sectors where the data existed had not been over-written, your files could be fully restored. If you google "undelete files" you'll get lots of hits. Again, good luck.

D.T.

[Jim Saul]

Hey Chuck, odds are NOT in your favor, but here is what to try:
1) if it is a separate drive, do not add / remove anything from it, if it is your C drive, then do your best.
2) download the free version of recuva
http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download
and do a deep scan - you may get lucky.
Files with the same name are much harder to find than ones that were just delete.

[cenote]

Dave, second time I did something of this line...

Jim, I tried a paid version I have of what is suppose to be better, and found nothing. Thanks for your suggestion.

I am goggling "Time Machine" next

[Jim Saul]

Sorry Chuck, recuva is pretty through, if a deep scan did not find it, then your only hope would be sending it out for data recovery, and generally starts at $1k :shock:



I Did however find a time machine for you:

[Steven]

I realize this doesn't answer the question, but I'm going to suggest a new way of doing backups that will keep you from making mistakes like this in the future.

I only drag the "Sequences" "Audio" and "Clipboards" folder to my backup device once each season.

After that, each time I want to backup my sequences, I make a folder on my backup device named by the current date like "2011-09-20". Then I go to the Sequences folder and sort it by modification date. I then drag the sequences that have been modified since my last backup into this new, empty folder. As a result, Windows never asks me if I want to overwrite a file/folder, and I never do.

[Jim Saul]

Steven wrote:

I realize this doesn't answer the question, but I'm going to suggest a new way of doing backups that will keep you from making mistakes like this in the future.

I only drag the "Sequences" "Audio" and "Clipboards" folder to my backup device once each season.

After that, each time I want to backup my sequences, I make a folder on my backup device named by the current date like "2011-09-20". Then I go to the Sequences folder and sort it by modification date. I then drag the sequences that have been modified since my last backup into this new, empty folder. As a result, Windows never asks me if I want to overwrite a file/folder, and I never do.

Sounds like a good email to the wish list - automatic backups with version's.

Also if your computer is newer than XP and has a good amount of free space, than you should turn on the shadow copy. Here is an article to follow on how to set it up to automatically save old versions.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2342534,00.asp

[ItsMeBobO]

The LOR Backup utility I wrote will make a copy of EVERY change for you. Click the link in my banner.

You can specify how many versions to keep and go back to an earlier version if you need to.

[Jim Saul]

Thanks Bob, I should have remembered that!
Also after looking at that article on VSS a little more carefully, they bring you to the command line a few more times than non IT people are comfortable with. I'll find or write one that uses the mouse more.

[ericnagel]

I'm using Crashplan (review here) for automatic online backups. Great for something like LOR. When (not if) you overwrite or lose a file, you can pick the date you want to recover it from, and there you have it.

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