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Undelete of overwritten files

Let's say I use robocopy and accidentally overwrite a new version of a file with an older version of the file.  Let's say as well that even if I had Shadowcopy this happened before Shadowcopy did a copy of the file.  Let's further say I did this from a share - in other words Recycle bin is not available to me. Can I somehow recover the overwritten newer version of the file and if so with what mechanism/tool/tools?  Are there any tools I could have used that would have made my life easier to begin with?
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Are there any tools I could have used that would have made my life easier to begin with?
In view of the fact that document files are generally so tiny, I usually recommend that people SAVE AS the document file BEFORE making any changes.  If you know you're going to change it anyway then this is quick and easy and safe.
I use Sync Back Pro to do what you doing. It alerts me that I am going to replace or delete a file. I look twice and sync once.

I have very few errors: under 10 in over a million or more syncs in a year
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Thanks but that the solutions are prescriptive and deal wit point 2 - I guess it's a LIFO response.
How about scenario 1 - when the damage has been done.

"Let's say I use robocopy and accidentally overwrite a new version of a file with an older version of the file.  Let's say as well that even if I had Shadowcopy this happened before Shadowcopy did a copy of the file.  Let's further say I did this from a share - in other words Recycle bin is not available to me. Can I somehow recover the overwritten newer version of the file and if so with what mechanism/tool/tools?"
Well, I did quote the question I was answering.....
I have no idea how to solve the more difficult problem in the absence of some kind of backup or volume shadow copies.
I know this is not what you are looking for but we train clients to use the utmost care and then recover the infrequent delete from our backups.

In my own case (financial work), I copy the file I need to a new folder (February, say) and give it a new name after copying. It becomes habit. Then I always have the prior file plus backups.
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Thanks for all the info.  I guess the key point is that an overwrite is different than an explicit delete so 'too bad' if that happens and there is no backup of the file overwritten.


All agreed?
Yes. Overwritten files mean the older one is gone.

Which, by the way, is why we train users to make a copy of what they are working on. It does not always work, but we have few accidents.
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@serialband - Sorry, you're right! When I scrolled back up to give credit I didn't scroll far enough. You were first with the key advice, "Stop using the disk." You've also added a key distinction between spinning disks and SSDs.

Brevity is typically a virtue, but here we have someone who has lost a file of undisclosed value. We don't know what level of desperation he is at. Knowing some cost numbers and insight into the hard work required even with the best recovery tools can help in understanding the options and in giving up hope of some easy, fast trick to get the file back.

Sadly by the time someone visits a forum, let alone receives answers, the disk in question likely has been written to many times. The "stop using the disk" advice is valuable prospectively, but then the best prospective advice was given early by John Hurst - continuous, versioning backups. "Save As" isn't an option when running Robocopy.
Following up on serialband's comment: "SSDs don't actually overwrite onto the existing sector." SSD's are not write-only media.  So this is not clear to me.  If I have a file called x in folder A and then I copy another file called x from another folder B into folder A I will get prompted about there being a file with that file name already - do I want to continue/overwrite?  So if I choose yes to that the original file x that I overwrote will still be there somewhere if I am working on an SSD but would not be there if I had used a SATA disk?
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Good to know about SSD's. Also good to know all the other stuff.
Thanks for all the info.
serialband - how do you remap  an SSD??
You don't remap the SSD, the internal firmware does it automatically.  You just read the sectors.
i'm sorry, but then i don't understand what you posted above:

"So they actually try to write into a lesser used sector and remap it as the existing sector.  You might possibly retrieve all your old data if you have a lot of free space.  If your SSD is near full, then you'll be overwriting the data much sooner. "
Here's a link that may explain wear leveling better:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling
ok - but would you not need a special software for that?  and if so which one?
They are built in to the flash drives themselves now.  SSDs generally use static wear levelling and USB flash memory tend to use dynamic wear leveling.  Some systems, like Apple built their own, specifically for their own SSDs, but you should not enable it for 3rd party SSDs.

http://thessdguy.com/how-controllers-maximize-ssd-life-better-wear-leveling/
http://www.howtogeek.com/222077/how-to-enable-trim-for-third-party-ssds-on-mac-os-x/
sorry, but  i meant for recovering the data
Standard file recovery software can do it.  That easus file recovery link I provided claims to do it.
ok tx for the info - Always useful