How to recover a deleted file?
Moderators: Forum Moderators, Developers
How to recover a deleted file?
This totally unrelated to Wesnoth but I have a question about Windows...
more specifically the trash can... see where I'm going yet?
How, or, can I recall, I mean restore, items I sent away... I'm f*d, aren't I?
Cause I had an entire unit tree for my campaign, and most of my story background in the folder I blitzed. HELP!
more specifically the trash can... see where I'm going yet?

How, or, can I recall, I mean restore, items I sent away... I'm f*d, aren't I?
Cause I had an entire unit tree for my campaign, and most of my story background in the folder I blitzed. HELP!
Last edited by Elvish_Hunter on July 11th, 2012, 10:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Edited title
Reason: Edited title
America-- Land of the Free, home of the Brave! "And now that we've taken care of the Braves we're coming after the Free."
"BANNED!!! What the hell do you mean BANNED? All I did was call one narrow-minded, power-hungry Nazi moderator a narrow-minded, power-hungry Nazi!"
"BANNED!!! What the hell do you mean BANNED? All I did was call one narrow-minded, power-hungry Nazi moderator a narrow-minded, power-hungry Nazi!"
Re: Unrelated
We are not a general-purpose support board. Moved to Off Topic.
UMC Story Images — Story images for your campaign!
- shadowm
- Site Administrator
- Posts: 6509
- Joined: November 14th, 2006, 5:54 pm
- Location: Chile
- Contact:
Re: Unrelated
And your Windows version is?
More generally, you should be able to restore your files by double-clicking on the Trash/Recycle Bin icon, selecting whatever you find there that needs to be restored, right clicking on it, and choosing Restore or whatever.
That is, assuming your files went there in the first place. If you originally used e.g. Shift+Delete to delete them or the Trash/Recycle Bin is disabled for their source medium, they are actually deleted and gone for good for most practical purposes.
More generally, you should be able to restore your files by double-clicking on the Trash/Recycle Bin icon, selecting whatever you find there that needs to be restored, right clicking on it, and choosing Restore or whatever.
That is, assuming your files went there in the first place. If you originally used e.g. Shift+Delete to delete them or the Trash/Recycle Bin is disabled for their source medium, they are actually deleted and gone for good for most practical purposes.
Author of the unofficial UtBS sequels Invasion from the Unknown and After the Storm.
Elsewhere: shadowm • Blog • Follow me on Twitter
Elsewhere: shadowm • Blog • Follow me on Twitter
Re: Unrelated
I'm running XP. But I already cleared the trash can...
So I guess it's gone. Thanks anyway, though.
So I guess it's gone. Thanks anyway, though.
America-- Land of the Free, home of the Brave! "And now that we've taken care of the Braves we're coming after the Free."
"BANNED!!! What the hell do you mean BANNED? All I did was call one narrow-minded, power-hungry Nazi moderator a narrow-minded, power-hungry Nazi!"
"BANNED!!! What the hell do you mean BANNED? All I did was call one narrow-minded, power-hungry Nazi moderator a narrow-minded, power-hungry Nazi!"
Re: Unrelated
Sometimes you can restore the system to a previous state, if so, maybe that would work. Otherwise, if it's gone gone, likely the only other option is data rescue/recovery software, which gets expensive.
Wesnoth Bestiary ( PREVIEW IT HERE )
Unit tree and stat browser
Canvas ( PREVIEW IT HERE )
Exp. map viewer
Unit tree and stat browser
Canvas ( PREVIEW IT HERE )
Exp. map viewer
- Elvish_Hunter
- Developer
- Posts: 1379
- Joined: September 4th, 2009, 2:39 pm
- Location: Lintanir Forest...
Re: Unrelated
junoslord wrote:How, or, can I recall, I mean restore, items I sent away... I'm f*d, aren't I?
Not exactly. From a technical point of view, Windows only marks the corresponding sectors in the File Allocation Table as "available". But the files are still there, at least until they get overwritten, that's why if you have some files that need to be gone for good you need to use a shredder.shadowmaster wrote:That is, assuming your files went there in the first place. If you originally used e.g. Shift+Delete to delete them or the Trash/Recycle Bin is disabled for their source medium, they are actually deleted and gone for good for most practical purposes.
Ye olde MS-DOS, up to version 6.22 included a tool called UNDELETE, but of course this won't work on FAT32, and NTFS.ancestral wrote:Otherwise, if it's gone gone, likely the only other option is data rescue/recovery software, which gets expensive.
However, there are several file recovery softwares around, and some of them are actually freeware, at least for personal use. Personally, when I accidentally deleted a file, I used Convar's PC Inspector File Recovery, although at the time I used Windows XP (it does not support Windows Vista or 7). It's freeware and there is also a specialized version for flash media.
However, when using this kind of softwares, bear in mind that they can't do anything if the file got overwritten (even by the installation of the recovery software itself), and that the more you use the computer, the higher are the chances that your file got nuked.
Also, according to point 1c of Posting Guidelines, I edited the title with a more meaningful one.
Last edited by Elvish_Hunter on July 12th, 2012, 9:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Added some corrections
Reason: Added some corrections
Current maintainer of these add-ons:
1.14: The Sojournings of Grog, A Rough Life, The White Troll (co-author), Wesnoth Lua Pack
1.12: Children of Dragons
Still active until the end of the year
1.14: The Sojournings of Grog, A Rough Life, The White Troll (co-author), Wesnoth Lua Pack
1.12: Children of Dragons
Still active until the end of the year
Re: How to recover a deleted file?
I use dropbox to sync all wesnoth files between my computers and it also has option to recover deleted/edited files (to older version).
- shadowm
- Site Administrator
- Posts: 6509
- Joined: November 14th, 2006, 5:54 pm
- Location: Chile
- Contact:
Re: Unrelated
I said “for most practical purposes”. In my experience, it isn’t very easy to recover deleted files but I have done it before on an Ext3 filesystem (and hope to never have to do it again).Elvish_Hunter wrote:Not exactly. [...]
Author of the unofficial UtBS sequels Invasion from the Unknown and After the Storm.
Elsewhere: shadowm • Blog • Follow me on Twitter
Elsewhere: shadowm • Blog • Follow me on Twitter
- Elvish_Hunter
- Developer
- Posts: 1379
- Joined: September 4th, 2009, 2:39 pm
- Location: Lintanir Forest...
Re: How to recover a deleted file?
Yeah, for what I can read it's extremely hard to recover deleted files from ext3 and ext4 - although some programs do exists as well (extundelete, ext3undel, photorec).shadowmaster wrote:In my experience, it isn’t very easy to recover deleted files but I have done it before on an Ext3 filesystem (and hope to never have to do it again).
But the OP was asking for help about Windows, and I don't think that he's using a ext4 partition on Windows with a special driver.

Current maintainer of these add-ons:
1.14: The Sojournings of Grog, A Rough Life, The White Troll (co-author), Wesnoth Lua Pack
1.12: Children of Dragons
Still active until the end of the year
1.14: The Sojournings of Grog, A Rough Life, The White Troll (co-author), Wesnoth Lua Pack
1.12: Children of Dragons
Still active until the end of the year