Recovering deleted data, Windows 7 Home Edition (x64)

Hi everyone

I've been searching and searching try to figure out a solution here. Basically, I had a zip file (which had a bunch of images in it) in a folder on my PC.

The exact destination was: C:\Users\Jack\Desktop\Jack\Random Files\Pictures

Anyways, on the 24th of March (2012), I deleted this file, and then removed it from the Recycle Bin. I now realize that I need to recover this zip file. Since removing the file, I have not put any new files in that specific folder titled "Pictures" (hopefully that's a good thing).

I've tried using a number of file recovery programs, majority of which I found here:

pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file-recovery-programs.htm

Unfortunately, no luck yet. For some reason, it brings up files from 2010, but will not bring up this file which I only deleted a week and a half ago.

Thank you in advance to everyone who takes the time to help me out.

Thanks,
Mark

kado897 said:

Hi Mark and welcome to Seven Forums.
If this is on a disk that has system protection turned on right click in an empty space in the folder and select properties. Go to the Previous Versions tab and let it populate. With a bit of luck you may have a version of the folder from before the date you deleted it. Double clicking on the version will open it in explorer and you can copy back your missing file.

Hello,

Thanks for the quick response. Unfortunately, I tried that, and there is nothing there. Not sure why though..

I went to My Computer -> Properties -> System Protection and noticed the following:

Recovery - Off
New Volume (E: ) - Off
OS (C: ) (System) - On

Keep in mind, this zip file was on the C drive, so I'm a bit surprised why there is nothing showing under the previous version tabs.

kado897 said:

That's a shame. The only other thing that may or may not work after this amount of time is a file recovery program. I notice you have tried some. I have found that Recuva works as well as any. The link is in my signature.

Thank you. I'm running Recuva right now (deep scan). I'll be sure to post back and let you know how it worked out for me.

Thank you everyone. Recuva just finished scanning, and I'm going to look through now and see if I can find what I'm looking for.

One weird thing though..the dates under "Last Modified" seem to be quite off, which is making it quite difficult for me to find what I'm looking for. For example, it's showing files that I downloaded yesterday, and deleted on the same day, as "Last Modified on 3/8/2012". Any idea why it's doing that?

Also, since all my images were in a .zip file, would I be looking for that .zip file specifically, or would all the images in the zip file been unzipped once I deleted it. Just trying to get an idea as to whether I'm looking for one file here, or multiple.