Hi,
I have a issue, which although means a lot to me, seems terribly trivial in relation to what you guys are often doing.
I had a Winamp *.m3u playlist, only 150 or so files in size, but made from sorting through over 50,000. Yesterday I saved over the file, with another playlist, thereby losing the original playlist. Of course I'm a top class idiot for not having a backup, and although it's only 150 odd files, it represents 100s of hours of sorting.
Is there any way this can be recovered.
I've tried many many different undelete programs. None have helped. It seems from what I've read that had the file been a MS Office file I'd be able to recover using many of these programs, but this doesn't seem to be the case with a standard m3u file.
Is there any tool that can be used to recover this file?
Can Encase do it? I've looked at it, but seems very complicated?
Anything simpler?
There are a lot of undelete programs on the market. One that I like in non-forensic cases is GetDataBack from Runtime Software. There are specific versions for NTFS and FAT and free demos that will allow you to see if you can recover your file before you buy.
Just a quick point, the more you use the computer after you delete and before you recover, the less chance you have of recovering what you want.
Thanks for the reply. I tried that app, but I can't find a feature that allows for the recovery of 'saved over' files.
I had a *.m3u file and in error used a 'save as' command to save another file over the top of it.
There is only one filename. I need a way to search for old versions of a file with the same name as a currently existing version.
If you choose "I don't know, use default settings." the program will find as many files and fragments as it can. From there you can hope that the file has not been overwritten by other disk activity and still exists as a file (not necessarily with the .m3u extension, or the exact name of the original file). Are you familiar with how Windows "renames" files that are deleted or overwritten?
Is there any way this can be recovered.
if the data you overwrote it with is of similar size += 1 cluster. chances are HIGH that the data is gone.
That would explain the lack of succes with the tools you tried.
Yeah I think it's a lost cause. I overwrote the file with another playlist of eqivilant size so I guess it's gone right over the top.
I'm not aware of the how files are renamed. I remember reading somewhere that they are given a random string + original extension?
Still thanks for your help.