Recovery of Files?

I don't know if there is a solution to this, but I thought it might be worth a try. A few years ago, I accidentally saved over a few hundred pictures with others that had the same file name. I only discovered this had occurred after I tried to compile the pictures for my sister (who lost her daughter). The pictures lost were of a Christmas that no one else in my family has pictures of.

I had these pictures saved on 2 different external hard drives (seagate) and my old laptop (toshiba). I stupidly saved over the files one one of the drives and deleted and replaced the files on the other two devices. All three devices have likely been defragmented multiple times over the years as well. Does anyone know of any way for me to retrieve these files? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Greetings, jmdt.

Sorry to hear of your loss.

I seriously doubt that the normal freeware recovery apps will do you much good - it's been my experience that, especially after defragmentation and overwriting, any data that these programs can recover is usually useless. If you do wish to try one such program, TestDisk is probably the best of the lot.

If you're willing to spend some $, however, there are dedicated forensics labs that may be able to help you. DriveSavers and Ontrack both offer free online quotes, and they both can do some pretty miraculous data recovery.

 

Excellent - thanks for your suggestions!

 

No problem - let us know how it goes, and good luck.