Getting back a file after overwriting it? [URGENT]

[Down8 0]

OK, I just reinstalled Win2K & Office2K.

 

I previously lost all my e-mail on my last reinstall, so I've went to length to keep a copy of my Outlook mail. I have a batch file that copies my outlook.pst file every night at 5am, to a file called oldoutlook.pst in my backup folder.

 

Reinstall went fine, I was importing my old settings, and before I could import my old mail back into Outlook [can this be done? I can't find where to import mail from Outlook2K, only OExpress], I set up my batch file to run. But, in the process, I changed it to reflect my new log-in, and went to test it....

 

Big mistake, it overwrote my old mail, with my new, EMPTY mail. Thus leaving me with nothing. Is there any possible way to recover the old, overwritten file?

 

Waiting & crying,

-bZj

[Almghty 0]

hmm tough question.

 

The answer is MAYBE but the hassle is just too great and you can never recover it completely.

 

If you were running Norton Undelete monitor (whatever its called now) you might be able to.

 

I guess u want a plausible solution.

 

First you need a DISK explorer editor .. this will look at the information on the drive.

 

The odds of finding all that info relies on two things

 

1) other data has not overwritten your area.

 

2) other data has not overwritten your area.

 

The odds of data NOT overwritting those clusters is very rare in NT since the page file grows ..internet explorer writes temp files. The same applies in 9x.

 

Even uisng a DISK tool you are just hoping to retrieve addresses because anything else other than text is abit more complicated.

 

If you feel the data is too precious there are firms who go the next level.

[Down8 0]

Well, do you know where I can get one of these disk explorers? I'd really like to get my mail back.

 

I'm limiting my usage, to avoid having data overwritten in that area. It was on a separate partition from my temp files, and my page file, if that is of any use.

 

-bZj

[Toby 0]

I don't know how to restore your file, but I do know a easy way to import your mails.

 

When you just installed Outlook, run it once. Outlook creates a new .pst-file. Exit Outlook and delete the file. Now when you start Outlook it will tell you that it can't find your file and allow allow you to browse for it. You choose your old buckup now and you'll get everything back.

 

I really hope you'll manage to restore the file, I lost my backup once and it was a real pain. Good luck.

 

/Toby

[Down8 0]

Yeah, I realized that just a while ago - duh, just replace the new file with the old one - sometimes I think too much.

 

Sadly, I think this will be my second [possibly third] complete loss of months worth of e-mail. I need a way to call for the date in yymmdd form, so I can have my batch file make a different copy each night, instead of just overwriting the previous version [which would've made me lose only a days worth of e-mail with my mistake, instead of all of it]. My friend, though, tells me that batch files are too limited to make such a call, so my search for an 'ID-10-T proof' back-up solution continues....

 

-bZj

[Cynan 0]

Personaly I keep all my important data on its own partition. That way if I do mess anything up and need to reformat etc, my data is still safe.

 

As far as getting the date in a batch file, just call the date command and return its value into a variable.

[Down8 0]

Well, I do keep my data backed up to a different partition, but I accidentally deleted my backup - haven't had an install go flawlessly yet.

 

As for the batch file, could you throw me an example? My scripting knowledge is pretty much limited to web design.

 

-bZj

[Cynan 0]

Quote:

FOR /F "tokens=2,3,4* delims=/ " %%i in ('date /T') do @copy %1 "%2 @%%k-%%j-%%i"

There ya go, just call it like, "<script> <source> <destination>".