alm4rr

Diamond Member
Dec 21, 2000
4,390
0
0
Was quoted a car price of a couple grand, now claims more .... was saved in a txt file which got (accidently) overwritten


any hope beyond hope there is a way to extract older text from plain .txt!?

EEK!
thx
 

montag451

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
4,587
0
0
What do you mean by overwritten?
Do you mean that you opened the txt file that had the info on it, then typed something out and deleted the original text and saved the file with the original file name?

Or, just deleted the file, then emptied the recycle bin?

Before you do anything, do a search for part of the sentence that was deleted under the 'find string' - F3 button you might be lucky and the file was temporarily saved.
otherwise:
If the first, you may have a problem. - you probably won't get the original text back, but you might be able to salvage it - LOTS of hard work and if your computer has been on since you deleted the message, it might not be there anyway.
You'll need to get a hex editor which can look up a particular sector [512bytes] on hard drives - then you look through the whole hdd - hope its a small hdd with a very small or fixed SWAPFILE/pagefile. This will take you a few years. You might be able to find some software that will do an automatic search for a string text.
 

KLin

Lifer
Feb 29, 2000
30,951
1,080
126
1. open notepad
2. open current text file
3. edit quote to original price
4. ...
5. PROFIT
 

alm4rr

Diamond Member
Dec 21, 2000
4,390
0
0
Originally posted by: montag451
What do you mean by overwritten?
Do you mean that you opened the txt file that had the info on it, then typed something out and deleted the original text and saved the file with the original file name?

Or, just deleted the file, then emptied the recycle bin?

Before you do anything, do a search for part of the sentence that was deleted under the 'find string' - F3 button you might be lucky and the file was temporarily saved.
otherwise:
If the first, you may have a problem. - you probably won't get the original text back, but you might be able to salvage it - LOTS of hard work and if your computer has been on since you deleted the message, it might not be there anyway.
You'll need to get a hex editor which can look up a particular sector [512bytes] on hard drives - then you look through the whole hdd - hope its a small hdd with a very small or fixed SWAPFILE/pagefile. This will take you a few years. You might be able to find some software that will do an automatic search for a string text.


lol thanks for the info

it was of the "Do you mean that you opened the txt file that had the info on it, then typed something out and deleted the original text and saved the file with the original file name?"

variety

oh well better luck next time
 

Slogun

Platinum Member
Jul 4, 2001
2,587
0
0
The demo version of stellar phoenix will tell you if the file is recoverable.
It will then cost you to pay for the full version to recoer any needed lost files.
 

mugs

Lifer
Apr 29, 2003
48,920
46
91
Originally posted by: KLin
1. open notepad
2. open current text file
3. edit quote to original price
4. ...
5. PROFIT

Yeah that's what I was thinking... not sure how a price you took down in a text file is "proof" that the guy offered the car for that price...