gHacks technology news » delete http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:26:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Recover accidentally deleted files http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/23/recover-accidentally-deleted-files/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/23/recover-accidentally-deleted-files/#comments Fri, 23 Mar 2007 08:17:44 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/23/recover-accidentally-deleted-filed/ I disabled my trashbin by default which means that deleted items bypass the trashbin and are deleted immediately. This works fine most of the time but it happens that I occasionally delete a file that I need later on again. There is no obvious way to get those files back and you will face serious troubles if want to get them back but used something like defragmentation on that hard drive after the deletion.

The question that some might ask is why one could recover deleted files at all. This is actually a very good question. Windows does not delete the file at all when you press the delete button. It simply deleted the reference to that file and makes the space the file occupied writable again. This means that you can recover most files if you are just fast enough. One freeware that can do the job is Recuva which is supposed to be pronounced recover.

It is developed by the same team that created CCleaner. Recuva scans the hard drive that you have selected and displays all deleted files that it finds in a list. It found more than 60000 files on my E: drive that I could try and recover. Information like filename, path and size are displayed to make it easier to find the files that you want to recover.

Recuva has fortunately a filter option. Just enter part of the filename or path and it will display only those files. It took 53 seconds to scan my 140 GB partition and display the 60000 entries.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/23/recover-accidentally-deleted-files/feed/ 13 Recover deleted or corrupted Thunderbird messages http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/04/recover-deleted-or-corrupted-thunderbird-messages/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/04/recover-deleted-or-corrupted-thunderbird-messages/#comments Thu, 04 Jan 2007 12:02:50 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/04/recover-deleted-or-corrupted-thunderbird-messages/ It sometimes happens that I delete a mail by accident because it does look like spam or a message that I do not longer need. Thunderbird does not display that message anymore if it is completely deleted from the mail client. Unknown to many Thunderbird does not delete the messages but flags them only which means it is relatively easy to recover corrupted or deleted mails. This method only works if you have not compressed the mail folders because compressing removes deleted messages from the mail files.

Open the Thunderbird Application Data folder which is located in your document and settings folder in Windows. Select the appropriate Thunderbird profile if there is more than one and click on Mail in that profile. You get a listing of all your email addresses. If you setup Firefox to have different mail folders for every email address you have to click in the folder of the email address that received (or send) the message. Otherwise Local Folders is the way to go.

The important files are those without extensions (Trash, Sent, Inbox ..) – locate the one that contained the mail(s) that you have deleted or are corrupted (do not show up anymore). Open it in an text editor, you could use notepad2 for instance for this purpose. Some folders might be rather big so choose a text editor that can handle large files. Thunderbird should be closed completely while editing those files.

All mails are basically stored in that file. The important part for us are the lines X-Mozilla-Status which defines a certain state of a message such as Read, Unread or Deleted. Search for the message(s) that you want to recover and edit the X-Mozilla-Status: XXXX line into X-Mozilla-Status: 0000 for unread or X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 for read messages.

Recovered messages will appear at the bottom of the folder and should be there after you startup Thunderbird for the next time. You sometimes have to delete the .msf file to make this work. If you edited the file Trash you would delete the file Trash.msf afterwards if the mails do not re-appear after a new start of Thunderbird.

source (and additional information)

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/04/recover-deleted-or-corrupted-thunderbird-messages/feed/ 15 Delete files permanently to counter file recovery tools http://www.ghacks.net/2006/06/11/delete-files-permanently-to-counter-file-recovery-tools/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/06/11/delete-files-permanently-to-counter-file-recovery-tools/#comments Sun, 11 Jun 2006 09:35:05 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2006/06/11/delete-files-permanently-to-counter-file-recovery-tools/ It is a well know fact that files that are deleted by normal means can be recovered with ease using so called file recovery utilities. This might not be a problem for most users but it surely is not nice if you sell a used computer and someone discovers private pictures, account data and the like on the formatted hard drive.

Super Shredder from analog x deletes files securely so that they can´t be recovered by file recovery software. There are still ways to recover those files but the equipment needed is way to expensive for almost everyone. The tool supports common methods like Gutmann or Nispom (Departement of Defense) but also a way to completely customize the procedure.

Eraser is another tool which could be used.

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