I had written my course paper in word and had name it research paper and saved it in a folder named manoj. Later from my fump drive i tried to copy a file which was also named research paper and tried to save it in the same folder manoj. windows asked me if i wanted to replace the file and accidently i said yes. now I can’t find my research paper. please help me out here
Try
Abstradrome Office Regenerator
Try
Abstradrome Office Regenerator
also add some pixie dust 😯 , if the file was overwritten, then it was - well - overwritten.
Now, IF the original "research paper" you overwrote was MUCH larger than the "research paper" you wrote on it, then you may be able to find some "tail"parts of the original "research paper".
Then once you get this partial data, if you were using the .doc (good ol' format) there may be chances of recovering some text, if you were using the .docx (new, stupid) you will have an additional issue, as getting text from it equates to extracting data from a very partial, besides corrupted, .zip file, something that rarely has any success AFAIK.
jaclaz
I think the chances are that the original document is lost.
However, I trust that you have stopped using the drive, and are only accessing it via a write blocker.
If it was a .DOC version, then you could try a word search on the raw drive to see if you can find some unique strings.
If it was a .DOCX you could do a raw search on the drive (data carving) to find all .DOCX files. It is just possible (but not very likely) the new one may have been saved in a different location.
Only when you either find the missing file, or give up, should you start using the drive again.
Michael's advice seems spot on. Depending on where the file was (and what was around it), it is possible that Windows saved the new file in different location, leaving the original file intact. If this s the case then a data carve for word documents (whatever type you used) across unallocated is your best and probably only bet. If Windows saved the file to a new location then you should get it all back. If it didn't you won't get anything back as if it used the same starting cluster for the new version then it will probably follow the same clusters so you will have lost the lot. If of course the old file was non-contiguous a data carve wont get the whole file. If the new file got an entirely new MFT entry (I have never tested this so I don't know if it would) then the deleted MFT entry (that you can search for) will give you all the data that you need to recover the file. Again, no idea if what you did would give a new MFT. A normal save of an opened file certainly doesn't but you have replaced an existing one so you never know.
If not, might I suggest a bottle of Jack Daniels and then start again!
What is the filesystem of the volume?