| | |  Technology News | May 2009 
Quincey Technology: When Gone is Gone
 Quincey Hobbs - PVNN
Q: I was working a project for school using PowerPoint and I saved part of my work to the hard drive on laptop. When I finished the project I saved it to a thumb drive. I wanted to save my finished work to the hard drive on the laptop so I opened it up from the thumb drive. The computer asked me if I wanted to replace the existing file, and I said yes. When I checked my project, I only had the unfinished copy of the PowerPoint. Is there any way to get my completed project back?
- Terrence
A: To better understand your dilemma, it helps to understand the nature of computers. When you are working in programs like word processing programs such as Microsoft Word or presentation programs like PowerPoint, the work that you are creating is held in an area called volatile storage. Most people may not realize that such storage exists, or they know of it by another name. There are two types of storage, volatile and non-volatile.
Volatile storage essentially means that what ever you are working on will be gone as soon as you power off your computer, and non-volatile storage saves your work even after the computer has been powered down. Volatile storage consists of storage space like RAM (Random Access Memory). Volatile storage was intended for the temporary storage of information until you were ready to save your work in a non-volatile storage area. Non-volatile storage areas consist of items like your hard drive and thumb drive.
Now that I have put you through a terse computer storage lesson, the answer to your question is Yes and No. The "No" is grounded in my belief, which based on what you described; you accidentally saved the older version of your work over your completed work.
It sounds as though you opened the older version that was saved to your laptop, and then changed the location where the file is to be save from the hard drive to your thumb drive. I tell you this so that you may remember to be cautious of this in the future.
As always, hope springs eternal. There are software programs that you can purchase to help in such situations. If you are using Windows XP, don't bother trying to perform a system restore. That feature only affects system settings and installed programs, not the files that you create and save.
However, there is a cottage industry that focuses simply on file recover software. I use a program called Active Undelete, but any file recovery software is necessary for your computer. They scan drives for older versions of files and you can save the recovered file to a different location. You should be able to purchase a decent program for about $30.
There are also some pretty good freeware file recover programs:
file-recovery.net
snapfiles.com
quetek.com
When choosing a file recovery program ensure that it is compatible with your operating system and the program that you want to recover. |
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