Help, lost file by overwrite

[Msheavnly77]

I have an odd question. I really hope someone can help. I was using TMPGE and accidentally hit over write. I saved a new file with the same name as the old one. But I didn't mean to. How can I get back the old file? It is obviously a movie. I've looked every where on my computer that I can think of but I can't find it. All I can find is the new saved file. The old one still has to be on my pc, right? Does anyone know where I can find it or possibly how to restart my computer in a back up type of fashion so that the recent things I've done would not be permanent. In other words so I could start my pc and not have the changes I did to the file be permanent. Does that make sense? I'm not sure I'm explaining it correctly. Any advice would be helpful. I have window washer and haven't shut down my computer in a few days because I think it may delete the old file.

Thanks,
Heather

[i_am_dave]

Heather,

I am sorry
Your file is most likely gone forever. When you hit start with TMPGEnc, a number of things occurred on your disk. First the entry in the file index for your system was updated and the sectors on which your file was stored were marked as available. Then the index was redirected to point to the next available free location on your disk.
You might recover some, or maybe all of you video file using some low level disk tools. I do not know of any off the top of my head.
But you would have to walk through your hard drive a cluster at a time and manually try to put your file back together. Not an easy task even for a small file, even more difficult for a large file such as a video file.
Also, if you drive was somewhat fragmented, pieces of the file could be scattered all over the place.

[coyote]

The only thing that may work is an un-delete program. And I do mean MAY work. Since you used the same file name . . . the hard disk may not know that the file is still there. Also, anytime you save anything after deleting a file it may overwrite sections of the old file (when you delete something you are really only deleting the name from the file tree)

There are many pieces of shareware that do this. One you may want to try is File Recover 2.76 (you can find it on shareware.com).

I suggest that when you download it and install it....that you do it to a different partition or hard drive. Simply by saving it to the same hard drive as that movie and installing it there may override sections of it. And that is if it is recoverable at all.

Good Luck