r/techsupport • u/Green_Tangerine1 • May 19 '22

I’ve deleted a 12Gb folder with everything I have; what can I do? Solved

[SOLVED] -> turns out I only needed to restart the pc

I currently use a notebook that was previously own by my dad, so in that time I had a folder in which I saved everything. Fast forwarding 2 years, I still used that folder for everything (it had 12Gb) and yesterday deleted it by accident. I’ve tried to recover it from the Recycle Bin, but it’s been running for 8 hours without a progress bar and I don’t know what to do.

Is there anything I could do? How long should I expect to wait?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

17 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

8

u/JouniFlemming May 19 '22 • Silver

When you delete data in Windows, it typically is not deleted as in removed from the drive, it is simply marked as deleted. This is basically how the Recycle Bin works. You could try to restart your computer and then try to restore the files from the Recycle Bin again.

If that doesn't work, a file recovery program should easily be able to recover the files, assuming they have not been overwritten yet (which they should not be, if they are still in the Recycle Bin).

6

u/Green_Tangerine1 May 19 '22

I restarted the pc and it fucking worked, thanks dude!

6

u/JouniFlemming May 19 '22

Very happy to hear! Use this as an opportunity to backup your data. Having anything important worth in one 12 Gb folder is a disaster waiting to happen. Copy your data first to some external hard drive or USB drive, and then upload to Google Drive or similar online drive.

Computers fail. Hard drives fail. Don't keep anything you cannot lose in just one computer and one drive. It will fail one day.

3

u/Green_Tangerine1 May 19 '22

I’m doing it right away, fuck I don’t ever want this to happen again lol. Thanks again for the input!

1

u/Green_Tangerine1 May 19 '22

thanks for the careful response man! Just to make sure I don’t screw things up, do you mind having a look at my response to the other comment in this post? It’s regarding my folder not appearing anymore when I open the recycle bin an additional time

4

u/CaptainSpectacular69 May 19 '22

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

12

u/Green_Tangerine1 May 19 '22

bruh I did it and it fucking worked, I’ve honestly not experienced such happiness since I got into college lol

thank you so much for the support!

1

u/Green_Tangerine1 May 19 '22

not yet. I’m afraid I could lose all the progress (if there’s any :/) in the recovering process. Also, when I opened the recycle bin again after starting the recovering, I couldn’t find my folder there anymore, so I might not even be able to recover it after turning off the pc

2

u/CaptainSpectacular69 May 19 '22

Have you tried Recuva? It's a great program for recovering files

1

u/Green_Tangerine1 May 19 '22 edited May 19 '22

should I wait more or try using it? I’ve just watched a tutorial of it on Yt and it seems like it gets files in an “underground” way, contrary to the Recycle Bin. Am I confusing things?

1

u/ngame1282 May 20 '22

Good to hear you have your data back but in the event, you were to delete something in the future, get the free app recuva. It will help you recover deleted and lost files.

-1

u/ThisCorrosion May 19 '22

Why do you have 12 GBs of porn you can just stream that stuff now.