ShadowExplorer - Recover Lost Files and Folders

Thought it might be useful to have this link to System protection in Windows 7 rather than Vista as in the video.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/330-system-protection-turn-off.html?filter[2]=Backup%20Restore

Thanks Kado, that is useful.

Hi, my system was recently updated to Win 7 and the "IT" guy backed up my files on the network drive. when he reinstalled the files on my desktop not all of them were there. How can i recover those that werent saved. our computers only go back one month, the Ecel file I need is older than that. help!

hr1 said:

Hi, my system was recently updated to Win 7 and the "IT" guy backed up my files on the network drive. when he reinstalled the files on my desktop not all of them were there. How can i recover those that werent saved. our computers only go back one month, the Ecel file I need is older than that. help!

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If Win7 was installed, all Vista or previous system restore points are gone. So those will not help you. If you forgot to backup some files, I am afraid they will be lost for good - unless you have an image of the old system (which is probably not the case).

Always image, image, image http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html?ltr=I

Download of Shadow Explorer

FYI - when I tried to download this my virus scanner (comodo internet security) blocked the download ... maybe I clicked the wrong download button?

To veryfy, I just downloaded Shadow Explorer from here. Then I checked it with Virus Total that scans it with 50 of the best AV programs. The result was completely clean. See Here.

Thank you - that link worked; Shadow Explorer found the deleted files (a couple Ghost images). Do you know if there are size limits on what it can handle? One image is about 364 Gig and the product has been trying to export it -- to a different logical drive, same physical drive -- for a little over 4 1/2 hours with no apparent progress ...

Nah, I am not aware of any size limits. Why don't you ask the author of the program. He is in Switzerland and has been very cooperative in the past.

Great idea, thanx much for the prompt response.

There is one thing though. Moving 364GB on the same physical disk is a real challenge for the arm which will have to fly back and forth. I would have chosen another disk to where to move it. For those massive operations I always keep a 1TB SSHD which is attached via eSata.

to whs - quick FYI - it did complete successfully; apparently (just based on my observation) when it calcs % complete it taking total num of files divided by num of files exported, so w/my situation of 4 files with one file representing 97% of aggregate size it hit that file & then didn't move (continued the pulsing tho) so the 364 gig took approx 6 hrs with my setup & a brand new WD 2T HDD ...

HDD vs SSHD

whs said:

There is one thing though. Moving 364GB on the same physical disk is a real challenge for the arm which will have to fly back and forth. I would have chosen another disk to where to move it. For those massive operations I always keep a 1TB SSHD which is attached via eSata.

Click to expand...

My son was raving about his new solid state drive but I confess to ignorance regarding the tech; now you've made really curious & I'll have to do a bit of "knowledge upgrading" ... have a great week & thanx again for your help.

Don't confuse SSD with SSHD. A SSHD is a spinning disk with a SSD as a cache buffer. A 1TB SSHD costs appr. $80 in the US and a 1TB SSD would cost appr. $400. What makes the speed of the SSD is the extremely short random access time of around 0.1ms versus a HDD of 15ms. That is 150 times faster.

But for streaming large data masses, SSHDs are pretty good. I made some performance comparisons which you can read here.

A big thanks to you, Whs. You've saved myself numerous times with this nifty trick. Haven't had the opportunity to say it till now, but thank you!

Recently, I lost another valuable document to clumsiness. I didn't even panic though—didn't have to—I simply launched ShadowExplorer, reclaimed my file and that was that.

I remember the first time I needed to use this file restoration method though... I was helping a member out on this forum actually. They wanted a batch file to delete a bunch of files I guess. For no particular reason, I decided to write the thing on my desktop (where I keep everything of importance). Here’s what I ended up running that led to the genocide of every last file and folder on my desktop:
The worst feeling possible struck me. But I soon found this tutorial, and managed to recover everything. Never been so relieved.

I was really lucky with the whole thing too: the very morning my little accident happened was when the last Shadow Copy backup routine took place. Backups happen once a month automatically.


I have a few small questions, Whs, regarding this file restoration method and file backup practises... Prior to reading this tutorial, I never knew that Windows' Shadow Copy Service preserved a copy of every directory and file on the drive. The Shadow Copy service is enabled on the boot partition by default, and it's always on. So why do members on the forum still frequently suggest file recovery software, like Recuva, to users when ShadowExplorer is almost assured to find a previous version of the deleted file? And why do many still recommend the practise of manual imaging, with software like Macrium?

Additionally, do you happen to know where Windows saves its Shadow Copies? If so, how can one extract this image, and store it elsewhere?


Thanks in advance.

Recuva is used when the whole disk including the shadows has been overwritten with something. Then the shadows are destroyed.

Macrium is still recommended because the shadows can be highly volatile and you cannnot control them - unlike images that you make.

The shadows are always in the partition to which they apply. They cannot be moved - at least I know no way to do that.

The difference between those backup methods is clear to me now. Though I shall continue to depend heavily on Shadow Copies (because who has time to remember to backup files these days? ).

Thanks again for your help, as well as this tutorial!