Deleted files in Windows 2000 and they're not in recycle bin

The short of this problem is that I deleted a large bunch of critical
files and folders from a Windows 2000 computer, need to restore them,
and they're not in the recycle bin. I'd like to recover them, and I'd
also like to understand how this could have happened.

The long of this is:

- I deleted the files/folders by "lassoing" them then pressing the
delete key. But I often delete files this way, and they show up in the
recycle bin.

- I immediately realized my mistake and clicked on the recycle bin, but
the files weren't there. Thousands of other files were there, dating
back six months or longer, and some other files from yesterday (the day
I made the mistake) were also there.

- This happened one day after I had set up a new PC in my house,
connected the new and old computers by a network, mapped the drives of
the computers to each other, etc. I had successfully copied all the My
Documents folder from the old computer back to the new one - except for
one subfolder and its contents, which wouldn't copy for a reason I don't
understand (kept getting a "file is in use" or "file sharing violation"
message). I *think* this occurred when I was TRYING to delete the
successfully-copied folders from the NEW computer, so that I could just
copy again. But I don't understand networking, mapping, etc., well
enough to know exactly what occurred.

Everything else aside, I *know* these files and folders were on the old
(Windows 2000) computer until around 10:00 last night, and they're not
there now, and I am confident that with the right tool/technique, I can
recover them.

FWIW, the Windows 2000 computer is organized with the C-drive being
mostly OS and program files, and the D drive, 80 gigs and about 40%
occupied, being the data drive. The "lost" files and folders were on
that drive.

 

Thanks. But are the deleted files recoverable with some kind of a
freeware tool?

 

Take a look at the links given by Pegasus under subject "what the heck
happened"

 

Not if you've using the pc in question. They have already been
overwritten by internet cache files.

 

It is possible that they may be recoverable but by no means is this a
guarantee. Too many factors can come into play. If the computer is heavily
used on the internet and the internet temp files is on the same partition
they may have already been overwritten by those. You can attempt to recover
them using freeware that you can find on the internet but be prepared to
sift though a lot of file information that may or may not be of any real use
to you.

 

I'll find out. Working in our favor are the facts that the deleted stuff
was on a second data drive; I think the temp files, browser caches, etc.,
are on the C: drive. Also, the drive was at least 50% free. I'm not sure
how Windows 2000 NTFS writes new data - I'd hope it uses older "deleted"
space first before writing to newly-freed space.

I'm at work now but will tackle the problem tonight and post the results.

 

I used http://www.softwarepatch.com/software/filerecoverysecdownload.html
(freeware undelete) and successfully recovered all the missing folders and
files.

User interface and documentation were less untuitive than I'd liked, but
some of this was probably because I was in a panicked rush to recover the
data. It did the job and was free - good enough for me.

The stuff bypassing the recycle bin happened either because I was holding
down the shift key when deleting, or because I was deleting from a mapped
drive.

 

Last week I tackeled a problem like yours (not on my own computer,
thank god). They waited about a week. There were only about 20 Word
documents. After yanking the hard drive, and setting it as a secondary
drive. I used a tool called handy recovery. Which basically found out
where the files were stored last, and recreated them on my primary
drive. 7 were perfectly preserved. One sustained minor damage. The
remaning were variously overwritten, but at least I had a complete list
of the deleted files. But i was able to recover a draft that had a .tmp
extention. And Then I used a hex editor called 010, to open up the
entire drive as a single file. I got back two more files that way
(either they were drafts, or somebody defragged sometime between
creation and deletion). It was a 30 gb drive, my searches took an hour
each, and returned hundreds of results.

It was a LOT of work for about 50 percent recovery.

You have a MUCH bigger challenge.