Hi all:

Hoping that everyone's keeping well. I've just had a bit of a nightmare 48 hours and well and truly screwed.

I found out on Friday evening that I'd a funeral to go to up in Scotland today (I live in the Midlands region). Undettered I booked return flights to sunny Scotland. I'd been working flat out on my literature review all week and (though editing - a lot of it) was required I'd managed to get up to 12,500 words.

Internet crashed on Sunday so couldn't send file to supervisor as arranged late on Sunday night. Decided to call into uni via way to airport to send file to supervisor and found it to be the wrong file (the file I started with last Sunday?!?). Not to worry I thought and sent it to the supervisor with the promise upon returning from Glasgow that the updated file will be sent.

Called into work after being dropped off to pick something up and headed home to get file off computer and send it onto supervisor so find the old file there?! In my infinite wisdom, I've somehow managed to delete the 'new' file I've spent the past week working on...

Came into uni and still here now, somehow trying in vain to do the work I've done over the past week. It's not happening. Drained after a long day up in Glasgow - had expected evening off and it's now 3:40 am. Tried to tidy up the old file and forwarded that onto supervisor but FFS - how's it going to seem to them?

Things are going really bad in my research in terms of progress. Last week's been a complete and utter waste of time and it's killing me. Spent the last hour in floods of tears trying to work out what's happened. Even then I was sure I deleted the correct file on Saturday.

I've got a meeting with supervisor on Thursday and dreading it... School boy/girl error but shouldn't happen, and now I don't have a completed literature review to show supervisor.

Deadline for literature review isn't until mid-June (so three months) but due to nature of my research I need it done like now as need to start collecting research by start of May realistically.

Can someone tell me it's not as bad as it seems - spent the past 15 minutes having crazy thoughts of having to go back to South Korea to teach English when I get booted out of my scholarship in 2 days time... Btw this is an MRes I'm doing this year (as a 1 + 3) hence the tight timescales...

Thanks...

S x

hi rebel
I also had a similar experience, I think most of us have had near-disappear files, deleted, corrupted, you name it :-)
On the night before my MSc viva I lost the presentation because I accidentally restarted my computer while it was still open. I was also in a state of panic at 2am! Luckily I had an old copy in my USB which had an outline. but I had to make the tables and graphs again. I was so tired when I actually had the viva. That was the only time I lost a ppt file.

Dont feel bad, you need to rest and after that you'll feel a lot better. The good thing about losing a work that's completed is that you will recall it eventually, it will come back to you. Your supervisor will understand. You'll be ok.
satchi

are you sure it just didn't save in a different location? i.e. in my documents, rather than the desktop or something?

======= Date Modified 30 Mar 2010 12:47:12 =======
god this sounds like a nightmare, i really feel for you here... you can try to reset your computer to a previous date, such as the day before you might have deleted your 'new' file, if you saved it onto the computer while you were working you might get an unfinished version of it then that cuts out the work you have to do now. It's a slim chance but worth a try, just make sure you back up all the work you've done since then in case that is deleted when you reset your computer.

Good luck (up)

Search has been done - not there. Just been through and checked every single file. I intentionally deleted copies so I only had the most up to date one - or so I thought.

Glum... :-(

btw if ur going to try the computer restore, go to start, control panel, systems and system restore, assuming it's a windows PC you have and not a Mac

Just to check, have you double-checked for it in the Recycle Bin? I'm sure you already have but thought it was worth an extra mention!

Yep - it's gone. Not in recycle bin. I do that with phone messages/emails and work. If it's done with it gets deleted completely. Always have...

Right, assuming it's been deleted or whatever, it has to be on your hard drive somewhere. It can't just have vanished in the sense that the file is just no longer there. Unless you've installed a lot of new software or saved some very big files since losing your file, the chances are really good that you can recover it because it won't have been overwritten. So, I've just had a think and a look and I have some very good, simple software that you can use, if you wish, to recover your file: EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard 5.0.1 (http://www.easeus.com/) Now, I'm going to upload it for you, give you the download address and then all you need to do is just download, install and run it - it's very straightforward to use and very effective (free to you, of course, and no expense spared). It's a small file, it won't take long and hopefully it'll do the trick. Will send you a pm when it's done.

Thank you. Much appreciated...

Okay, Rebel, Pm'd you. Really hope it works for you. Let us know how you get on (up)

In case this helps: were you working by any chance on a university account? If so my university backs up all files somewhere every night, and they can give you instructions on how to rescue earlier versions of a file. You might get a more developed version back that way. Computing services were actually nice enough to recover a deleted file on my laptop that wasn't saved onto my university account too once, so it might be worth at least asking if they can help. Hope walminskipeasucker's programme worked though.

======= Date Modified 31 Mar 2010 09:06:54 =======
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Really hope that you found it and all is ok now. I was reassured by a policeman friend of mine that with the type of software that Wal has sent you anything is recoverable - its how they catch those nasty pieces of work... nothing that is on your harddrive can ever be totally wiped no matter how hard you try - the only way to do it apparently is with an industrial strength magnet! Fingers crossed for you that you've got it back now and panic over - been there, done that, have the neurosis :-) xxx