I went to back up my files today, and with one wrong mouse click I sent some of music files to recycle bin and accidentally deleted them. I know that files arent completely deleted they are still in there some where, question is how can I recover them. I had some rare and out of print songs that are irreplaceable!!

 

Ok, did you empty the recycle bin?

If the answer is yes download some file recovery software (ON A DIFFERENT COMPUTER!) and burn it to a cd, then run it on yours and see if it gets it back. If you emptied the bin then ANYTHING you do on your computer which causes information to be stored on the hard drive could be overwriting your files! Avoid saving more files or modifying hard drive contents at all costs if recovering the songs is that important to you until you can get them back.

 

Thanks, I tried doing that they are lost, its shame I was thinking of going back to dj-ing and some of those songs were given to me years ago and I cant replace them.

 

They're not lost....you just cant find them....

I've done countless recoveries on harddrives that were screwed up, formatted, wiped, etc....and its always possible to recover them.


Do you have a spare computer that you could put this harddrive in? If so, I can help you out....if not...then you might be SOL...

 

If not, I notice your location says Ballston Spa. I'm going to RPI in Troy which I don't think is very far from there, I might be able to put your hard drive in an external case and get the files off it with an undelete utility for you.

Edit: Also if you have a USB flash drive you can try downloading this program: http://officerecovery.com/freeundelete/ to the flash drive (NOT your hard drive) and installing it onto that flash drive then using it to get your files (again make sure to back them up to that usb drive or an external drive, once you have them all recovered then you can put them on the computer's HD). As long as you have not saved a lot of new files or moved a lot of files around they should still be there, Windows doesn't really "delete" a file. It just "forgets" where it is, the file is still there but if Windows has something else to save it will happily put something new there since it doesn't think that file exists anymore. In that case once something else has been written over the file recovery will be next to impossible.

 

Thanks guys! I think I'll try picking up a flash drive and down load the undelete program. Wont be able to do it till next payday but I'll keep you posted.Thanks again!

 

I found my music files!! Now I just have to get them to work I keep getting this error message:

Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file.

What could my next step be?

 

I was able to recover my WMA files now its just mp3 files that are giving me the error message.

 

Have you tried playing them in a different player? Such as Winamp or maybe VLC player? (I have yet to find anything VLC will not play, odds are if you try them in that and they don't work they may be corrupted in which case you may or may not be able to recover them)

 

I downloaded VLC and was able to play all but 30 of my MP3s I can live with that, those can be replaced. Thanks guys!!