I'm such a clutz.

July 1, 2009 11:45 AM

I spent a month labouring away on a website only to somehow delete it before emptying the trashcan. Yes, I know. Pathetic. It's been a week, however, and I'm seriously thinking of going to the expense of having it professionally retrieved. I know deleted photos can usually be retrieved - which is good because I really need them - but what are my chances of being able to get back properly formatted .html pages? Or formatted in such a way that I can at least try and restore them to their former glory.
posted by Zé Pequeno to computers & internet (14 comments total)

Can you go through your browser cache and find the HTML and other goodies?
posted by dirtdirt at 11:51 AM on July 1

STOP USING THAT COMPUTER NOW.

Most data recovery tools make use of the fact that when you delete a file, the hard drive marks those sectors unused, but it doesn't actually put there data there immediately. The more you use the computer, the more likely it is that those sectors have already been overwritten with other data, which makes recovery nigh-impossible.

If you've been using that computer regularly for a week, you chances are probably slim to none. If it's been sitting idle, while you surf metafilter from other machines, there's a chance.
posted by chrisamiller at 11:52 AM on July 1

If it's been a week you've probably irretrievably lost parts of it. But you may be able to recover quite a lot. Use an undelete tool. (Keep one installed on a thumb drive to avoid overwriting the deleted files when you install the undelete tool.)

For Windows I typically use FileScavenger 3. On a Mac, DataRescue II. There are others out there. Any of them will typically scan your drive, find deleted files and restore them to visibility if they haven't been overwritten.

Deleting a file generally just changes some aspect of the data to tell the system that this file is unnecessary, and the space it is taking up can be used for something else. It doesn't actually remove the file, unless you use a utility that securely removes data (by overwriting it with zeros, typically).
posted by caution live frogs at 11:53 AM on July 1 [2 favorites has favorites]

If you've been using that computer during that week since it happened, your chance of retrieving that info from your hard disk is pretty low.

By the way, the chance of retrieval has nothing to do with the kind of file.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:53 AM on July 1

You seem to be making the assumption that you're likely to get back a spectrum of things ranging from pieces of files to complete files. In reality, it's a lot more likely to be all-or-nothing unless these were some huge files that took several blocks in the filesystem. You're not going to get chunks with garbage between -- most file recovery tools are just going to assume the whole file's junked, which it likely is.

As everyone else has said, you typically can get files back if you stop using the computer immediately, the reason being that it is less likely that your filesystem has reused that part of the drive. If you've used it a week, and really done anything -- especially anything filesystem-intensive, like web browsing with a cache -- then you're likely out of luck.
posted by mikeh at 12:00 PM on July 1

How did you manage to work on a website for a month without any of it getting uploaded to a server somewhere? A month?

Anyway, the advice above is correct: step one is always stop using computer (making new files) immediately, and then try some data-recovery "undelete" tools.

If you throw a file in the trash, empty the trash, and then run some undelete utility immediately, you'll recover it 99.9999 percent of the time. After a week? Hard to guess.
posted by rokusan at 12:00 PM on July 1

Responding to questions: Not currently on the computer in question because I know the more I use it the more I'm going to end up losing data. I want to get all the tables and frames back exactly how they appeared in the original. I'm not a web designer and it was a painstaking process getting everything to look how I wanted it. I am pretty confident that I can get the text content back, but it's the kickass layout that I really want.

From what I'm seeing online of prices, it doesn't look like it's going to be worth it :(
posted by Zé Pequeno at 12:02 PM on July 1

You're not looking for data recovery per say, your hard drive is fine. Your data is probably gone after using the computer for a week, but you can try looking for undelete utilities which are free/cheap.
posted by wongcorgi at 12:11 PM on July 1

If you have largely avoided using the computer over the last week, there is a reasonable chance you could get back most of your files (intact, even.) Are you using Windows XP/Vista/7? If so, GetDataBack NTFS has been a very valuable tool for me a couple of times over the years, and at $79, much less expensive than the time wasted searching through backups or trying to recreate the lost items.
posted by biggity at 12:16 PM on July 1

HTML is made of text. If a file is recoverable, its formatting will not have changed.
posted by dreadpiratesully at 12:16 PM on July 1

I'm using Mac OS Leopard if anyone can advise a good program.
posted by Zé Pequeno at 12:18 PM on July 1

You might want to look at Data Rescue II.

Note that you shouldn't run this machine at all—not even to install the data recovery tools. When a file gets trashed, the data remains on the hard drive, but those areas of the hard drive also tend to be the ones that are next to be overwritten. If you did anything with your machine after trashing the files—short of unplugging it immediately—it's likely that somewhere between a few and all of the files will not recoverable.

I'm sure you've already kicked yourself about it, but this is exactly the kind of situation where Time Machine saves your ass. For next time.
posted by paulg at 1:00 PM on July 1

Seconding "dude you need to turn on Time Machine". Buy a big external USB or FireWire disk, set it, and forget it.
posted by Mikey-San at 1:53 PM on July 1 [1 favorite has favorites]

In my experience, it will take a lot less time to put it together again than it did the first time. You may want to "spot-check" this theory by rebuilding a single page, and then weigh the value of your time vs expen$$$ive data recovery.

I have been there. I was surprised at how much of the time spent on the first run-though was "figuring stuff out time" (as opposed to "actually doing it time") and at how fast it came back together on the second try.
posted by Aquaman at 3:31 PM on July 1