Trying to recover my files.

[Cross]

I deleted bearshare the otherday, but my directory folder was also erased, which had everything from movies to songs to papers. I recovered a bit but my computer froze during the process. Any suggestions on programs for recovering deleted files?

[Big Swami]

There are a lot of great data-recovery programs out there, but they cost money. Also, if the area on your disk where all the files used to be located gets overwritten with new files, you're pretty much out of luck.

[Uncle Mxy]

If you're talking Windows, there's some free stuff that seems to do well enough for casual use:

http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/

[Cross]

If you're talking Windows, there's some free stuff that seems to do well enough for casual use:

http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/

Mxy, are you familiar with this program?

I was using that until, well it froze. I can't find my folder anymore. Maybe because I tried to recover it once? However when I tried other programs, I could do a search and find them. Unfortunately I have to pay for those.

[Uncle Mxy]

I've used it a couple times without problem on a family member's machine about a year ago. It seemed to do what it was advertised as doing.

[Big Swami]

I've used R-Undelete, and it seems to work OK if you haven't overwritten your disk too much.

[MikeMyers]

I've used R-Undelete, and it seems to work OK if you haven't overwritten your disk too much.

I will concur. Paid $50 for it but was well worth it to get all my stuff back.

[Cross]

I will concur. Paid $50 for it but was well worth it to get all my stuff back.

any free programs?

[Uncle Mxy]

There's only so much that can be done, be it with freeware or commercial tools, if the disk has been scribbled on after deletion. Do you know WHEN you realized that, by deleting Bearshare, you deleted stuff you wanted to keep? How much stuff happened in the meantime? That'll go a long way toward sorting out how much of a chance you have with recovery tools.

Note that disks aren't generally set up to write over only the oldest stuff on the disk as you scribble new stuff on, as that will make things dog-slow and inefficient. It doesn't necessarily take a lot of subsequent activity to cause what you're looking for to be hopelessly lost. In fact, sometimes just the act of just shutting down a system cleanly is enough to roach your chances.