The other day I lost some of my files.

This is what happened:

I downloaded a whole lot of pictures from my camera this morning (moved not copied)

On the computer I then previewed them and changed some of them in gimp.

I then created two folders to sort them and sorted them accordingly.

Then I wanted to copy it to the laptop in order to write on CD

For some reason the laptop did not see the new folder (over network) and I then moved the folders to one of the folders on the PC which the laptop could see.

This is where the brown stuff hit the fan.

When I moved it a message popped up saying it could not move one of the folders because it was used by another program (although gimp was already closed)

I then just said OK and thought I will just copy it instead of moving it.

BUT when I went back to my original two folders the one still had all the pictures but the other folder was empty (and still is). So somewhere between moving them and receiving the error message they were lost.

I tried searching for the file names on the whole computer but did not get anything.

Is there anywhere else one can look? I have not rebooted the PC yet so if it does store it in a temp folder or something it must still be here somewhere

The solution:

1. Ask your brother who is a programmer what to do.

2. Un-delete the files.

That was his advice. First time I heard of this. I thought to myself  “duh, I deleted the files, they were not in the trash can, how can you undelete it?”

So he referred me to a nifty free little application called FreeUndelete at  http://www.officerecovery.com/

You just download it and install it.

You will see the list of drives on the left. You can also plug in your camera or memory stick and it will show up there.

Double click the drive on which the files were and the application will scan that drive for deleted files.

Select the files and then press the undelete button

At the bottom of the screen of the app you will see a place where you can tell the application where to save the files once they have been recovered.

If you located the deleted files select them and press the “Undelete” button. The application will undelete the files for you.

Select the drive on which your files were

In my case I could not find the files on my PC.

I then plugged in my camera and recovered the deleted files from the memory card in my camera.

Here is one of the pics I nearly lost:

Wupperthal

Thanks a million FreeUndelete, you saved me another trip to Wupperthal.