Can overwritten files be recovered?

[rnmcd]

I had several instances of MS Word open, when I saved the file-in-question, another file was saved with the file-in-question name.

 

[Laputa]

No, but you may have a temp file if you already has one open if you still have not closed the file. If you closed it, it might be too late by now.

 

[RebateMonger]

If you are saving to a shared folder on a Windows Server 2003 server, then, yes. You can use the "Previous Versions" option to bring back previous versions of the original file.

Otherwise, no. The original version is gone from the hard drive when you saved over it.

 

[rnmcd]

I ended up buying a couple of data recovery programs. When I ran them, they were able to find the file as a xxxxx.tmp file--and they were the correct size.

But when I restored them and tried to open them as a .doc, Word said they were not valid file types. OH well.

 

[Slikkster]

http://www.tech-pro.net/doc-regenerator.html

 

[Laputa]

Data are written in 0s and 1s in terms of sectors at the hardware level with 1-bit of information at a time. There's no turning back at the physical level unless there's another copy somewhere that has not been touched. That's probably what you are getting with those tmp files since too much has been done written back to the drive after that file got overwritten. If stopped using the drive immediately and perform the recovery attempt, the tmp file is probably good. You'll get the file with any recovery program out there, but most likely they will be corrupt because the data bits structures are different than what it was comparing the MFT with the CRC record.

 

[marulee]

Originally posted by: Laputa
Data are written in 0s and 1s in terms of sectors at the hardware level with 1-bit of information at a time. There's no turning back at the physical level unless there's another copy somewhere that has not been touched. That's probably what you are getting with those tmp files since too much has been done written back to the drive after that file got overwritten. If stopped using the drive immediately and perform the recovery attempt, the tmp file is probably good. You'll get the file with any recovery program out there, but most likely they will be corrupt because the data bits structures are different than what it was comparing the MFT with the CRC record.

There's no turning back at the physical level unless there's another copy somewhere that has not been touched.

Yes will recovered by a recovery software! but not tmp file!