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Is there anyway to recover an overwritten file? Please help!


Mike18

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I accidentally overwrote a file I had been working on for three days now. VideoPad had been crashing, as it always does, and as I was trying to reopen the project, I canceled loading the project and saved an empty project by accident onto the file I had been using for days. Now, I have no idea how to get back the overwritten file. Please, if anyone has any idea of how to recover an overwritten file, please reply to me. Your help is greatly appreciated.

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I know the feeling.

 

I now make a copy of all project input files into folder1

Output goes to folder2

Then a backup of project files after each major edit to folder3

 

 

BTW, "VideoPad had been crashing, as it always does"

Which version do you have?

Any idea what causes the crash ..?

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I accidentally overwrote a file I had been working on for three days now. VideoPad had been crashing, as it always does, and as I was trying to reopen the project, I canceled loading the project and saved an empty project by accident onto the file I had been using for days. Now, I have no idea how to get back the overwritten file.

 

See what you find under FILE menu|RECENT PROJECTS.

Regularly SAVE PROJECT FILE AS, under a new file name. <ctrl, shift, s>

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Hi

 

".... how to recover an overwritten file,..."

 

EDITED.

 

OOps! I am afraid you can't - directly. If you have overwritten it, it has been resaved (in this case with a blank project) with the same name, and the original has been removed.

The project (.vpj) files are essentially text files and as such are presumably flagged as deleted and rewritten. Windows will go some way to prevent some text and image files etc with same names being overwritten by adding a suffix to subsequent files..VP doesn't do this as it expects you to Save project as.. when you want to save an interim copy of the project with a different name and so retaining the first file which you may want to revert to. The "Save project" option doesn't give the option of stopping the process either, it just does it.

An "Are you sure?" warning might be a possible addition to future versions of VP.

 

However, I tried to see if one could reverse the procedure using a third party recovery program.to restore my "lost" .vpj file having deliberately overwritten it with a new "Save project" choice.

 

The program DID find the deleted file (but gave it a different name) so it simply loaded it back when I requested it. So...It looks like it could be restored provided the deleted file's disc space has not been overwritten by new data.

I used a Piriform freeware program called Recuva. If you want to try it, the overwritten .vpj file is flagged as having been deleted from the PC Dustbin, although you don't actually see this.

 

Nat

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  • 5 months later...

Hi Samantha,

 

If you save to the same file, the old one will be physically deleted. I'm sorry but there is no reliable way to recover a deleted file. Nat's method only works when the disk sector is still unchanged - it can be modified by the OS any time.

 

We understand the feeling when this happens. For that we'll make a change in the next release: when you save VideoPad project, the old file will be moved into system recycle bin instead of deleted physically. You should be able to recover it before you empty the recycle bin.

 

Thanks for letting us know the issues.

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