Question

Need file recovery method and/or tool

Asked by: HighTechGeek

Microsoft Windows XP Home SP2
Microsoft Works version 8.0
*.wps file recovery

I have a client that had been working in Microsoft Works Word Processor for many months generating a *.wps document. He has a backup, but it is many weeks old. He recently opened the *.wps file and it was blank and only 13K.

I think he opened a blank document and accidentally saved it over his original document, but we are not sure.

Seeing that the file was not "deleted" in the traditional sense, how might I recover his old file?

I have removed the drive and put it as a slave in another computer. I have tried using R-Studio but it only finds the existing blank file. I have limited knowledge of R-Studio and have only used it in the past to recover files on drives that are damaged or won't boot, but I need a way to recover a file (or fragments of a file) that is still on the drive but not showing up in the directories.

Do you think an "undelete" tool would work even though the file was never deleted? What tools do you recommend?

UPDATE: R-Studio doesn't list the *.wps file type as a known type. I just tried Pandora Recovery and it has far fewer known file types than R-Studio. Needless to say, it doesn't recognize *.wps files and is of no use to me (as far as I can tell). You can only do a surface scan for known file types.

Thanks,
Dan

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Asked On
2009-02-06 at 11:43:36ID24120559
Tags

Microsoft Works Word Processor

,

WPS

,

Windows XP

,

file recovery

Topics

Disaster Recovery

,

Computer Hard Drives

,

Microsoft Works Spreadsheet Software

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Answers

 

by: dbruntonPosted on 2009-02-06 at 17:59:35ID: 23576109

Try Recuva http://www.recuva.com/  Free for use.

or

GetDataBack http://www.runtime.org/  Free to try.  If it sees your files you pay for full functionality.

 

by: coral47Posted on 2009-02-06 at 18:14:02ID: 23576141

I did that before.
If this was a plain text file, you could use a disk editor to find it. I am assuming a .wps file isn't plain text.
You might still be able to do it by 'copying' a small piece of the backup file (from a disk editor) and using it for the search function.
UBCD has a few on it (does fast searches) and Disk Investigator runs under Windows (slow searches, but a good copy sectors funtion)

The site I had posted the account of doing it is no more, but I found a copy on Web Archive
http://web.archive.org/web/20070804013153/www.expertsrt.com/articles/coral/Warstory.shtml

 

by: HighTechGeekPosted on 2009-03-20 at 09:24:07ID: 23940954

Thanks, but none of these helped.

None of these programs specifically recognize a Microsoft Works Word Processor file (if he had used Microsoft Word, almost every recovery tool recognizes a *.doc file). I also searched the entire drive using a disk editor for known words from the document with no success.

We have given up. He is going to start over and re-type the document from scratch.

Seems silly since the file was never deleted.

thanks anyway...

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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