Recover overwritten file

Question

I accidentally overwrite my file with another file. It was happened when take the latest version from Visual Source Safe(VSS). Can I recover my old file?

Answer 1

If your windows installation has Shadow Copies enabled for the volume in question, you may find earlier snapshots of the file by taking properties on it and hitting the Previous versions tab (or shadow copy). These are usually taken on specific times though, like every 4 hour or once a day - so it might not help even if it's enabled.

Answer 2

If it overwrote the file in the same spot on the disk, no, it's gone forever.

You might want to check out Recuva though, it's a pretty decent file recovery program, made by Piriform, the makers of CCleaner and Defraggler. Basically, it scans your hard drive and tells you what it found that is not explicitly listed in the filesystem.

Answer 3

Been there, done that. Ended up losing lots of work because of VSS too, in the past.

VSS keeps a history of files so in VSS, you can always go to a previous version. Unfortunately, if you work with a local copy of a file from VSS and made modifications to it, then those modifications are often lost when you get that file from VSS again. That's because VSS doesn't send files to the garbage folder but it does an immediate delete, which is a lot tougher to recover.

Basically, it means that you have to make a time/cost analysis now. How much time would it take you to create those modifications again? Then compare this with the amount of time it would take to actually try to recover the files with the use of some tools. If you'd only lose a couple of hours work, it might not be worth the effort to try and recover the file but just rewrite it.

Of course, when you do try to use a recovery tool, make sure you use this tool as fast as possible! Why? Because the location of the file that was deleted is now marked as usable for other files! Chances are that parts of the original data has already been overwritten by some temporary file of your web browser or by some other tool that claims disk space. Even downloading this recovery tool or installation of this tool can overwrite your original file data, making it impossible to recover. If you're reading this right now on the system that lost your file, chances are that you've already damaged the file even further, beyond recovery. Even in the best-case scenario, there's still a chance that VSS itself overwrote your file with the file it retrieved from the repository. The chance of your deleted file data being overwritten by some new file depends on the amount of free disk space on your system. The more free space you have, the less likelier it is that the deleted file is overwritten. Still, chances are that you will be able to recover the file. They would be even better if you had a recovery tool installed even before you lost the file and when you'd start the recovery almost immediately after losing the file.