i have been doing a programing project and i have been keeping all the files on a usb stick. To get to the point i accidentally deleted this folder in the usb with all the files in. can anyone tell me how to restore them? i have already tried the program file drill but that did not work.
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What steps can I take to try to recover lost or inaccessible data from any storage device?  Answers:   This applies to any computer storage device, e.g. internal/external hard drives, USB sticks, flash memory. The most important thing is to STOP using it, any type of I/O can ruin your chances of a recovery.     We have separate questions covering common problems with USB flash drives in greater detail:
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I decided to open a file instead of saving it, made lots of changes saved many times, but when I closed it, I realised I couldn't find it anymore.  I'm hopping the file is still here, but can't find it anywhere. Is there any way I can recover this file?  PS: it seems the file should be still there somewhere, because if I re-open the original file from the page it puts the "[2]" in the end of it, which could mean it conflicted with some original file.
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I accidentally deleted a file from my laptop. I'm using Fedora. Is it possible to recover the file?
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Is it possible to find out which files are transferred to an external usb flash drive in certain period of time?   To be more clear. If I/someone have a flash drive and take some data from me. How do I know which files are copied? Finding out file copy hostory could be also a work around.
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I cut and paste an 80GB worth of files and folders. At about 80% I cancelled it. Are some of the files deleted and gone forever? Does the files that were successfully transferred gets deleted? If yes, can I still recover them?
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So I have unmounted a usb external hard drive but I went to re-mount it.  Is there a command that I can use to remount the drive?  Only way I know to re-mount a drive is to disconnect the usb cable from my Mac and reconnect it.
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A guy I work with just came by to ask me about a damaged thumb drive/USB flash drive.  Apparently his son dropped it on a hard surface and it won't power up anymore.  They've tried plugging it into multiple machines without success, even though each port they tried was able to power other USB devices.  He knows it's not a lost cause because a local tech store is offering to recover the data for $500, but he says they're not worth that much.  I figured someone on SU would have an idea about this; he doesn't care about using the drive in the future, just wants to salvage a few files that would be a pain to recreate.  Is this possible without advanced equipment, and if so, how?  He said he already tried the advice on the Internet about typing in different drive letters and such, but that failed because there was no power going to the drive.  He also said that he opened the case up at one point, but I'm not sure what, if anything, he did inside.
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I'm trying to restore some files for a friend who messed up a USB stick by pulling it out of the computer too soon. By searching invisible partitions I was able to restore the files. All files are intact, except 1 excel file that seems to be corrupted.  I've googled about ways to repair an Excel file, because the default repair options in Excel 2003-2010 do not work for this file. I've came across a numerous  third-party apps, of which the  one seemes to be able to do the job: Recovery Toolbox for Excel.  Of-course, this and all other apps I found require a purchase to actually repair the file. It seems a bit silly to pay 30 dollars for a one time thing, and something that is not for myself. So, I would like to keep that as a last-resort option.  Is there anything I can try to fix this? I've attached a screenshot of how the file looks when I open it on my OSX when converted to a HTML file (to view the code), for  the option that it could be a character set problem.
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I deleted lots of files &amp; folders on my laptop and then I put a new files in the same folders. I need to recover the deleted files. I tried a lot of recovery software and I couldn't recover my old files.   I read that if you refill the folders with new files after deleting old ones then I can't recover them again. Is that true?   What should I do?
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My Portable harddisk was working fine. I once accessed it from a linux terminal. Later when I tried to use it in window it said You need to format it before you can access  In Ubuntu also when I plug it, it does not appear.  I tried running chkdisk but Windows says Raw file system could not be processed.  Is there any way I can get back the disk data?  Recovery software does not preserve folder when it recovers data. Also When I tried it it says "1 days remaining to process" nearly 350GB data.
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I know this is something I shouldn't do, but it happened(Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS) as a root user I deleted /usr/lib folder. Any ideas how to restore it?
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This is a followup on my original post  which may be deleted in the future.  In the process of backing up my audio books, I "permanently" removed a folder (with subfolders) that I had already exclusively moved to that drive. It's path is /media/gratis/Seagate Expansion Drive/Audiobooks/Jason Dark. The sole folder in that should be called John Sinclair; but I'm not sure about that.  Which tool offers the best chances to recover those files? I haven't written plenty on that drive afterwards; so I hope for the best. It's not that other methods failed; I just cant get my head around what to do and I want to be cautious. It's a NTFS Drive.  According to testdisk it has an "EFI GPT" Partition table.  Disk /dev/sdb - 5000 GB / 4657 GiB - CHS 608001 255 63, sector size=512 - Seagate Expansion Desk, FW:9401   Information According to "Disks" (Ubuntu Standard Software):  NTFS; GUID Partition Table; [...] Partition Type: Microsoft Reserved   Attempt 1: First off, ntfsprogs seems to no longer be in repos (those mentioned by another user); but it is already installed on my machine so no problems there. I always get the error:     Access is denied because the NTFS volume is already exclusively opened. The volume may be already mounted, or another software may use it which could be identified for example by the help of the 'fuser' command. You can use force option to avoid this check, but this is not recommended and may lead to data corruption.   Although I only just plugged it in and even quit Nautilus by force (nautilus -q).   Therefore, I ran sudo ntfsundelete /dev/sdb2 -f. That gave me a list of a bunch of files, 205013 to be exact. Now, what I want is the content of the directory .../Audiobooks/Jason\ Dark/ to be restored. What do I have to do? It's contents are .m4b &amp; .opus files and folders, of course.
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Recently I deleted the folder Desktop from my $HOME directory. When I logged in again all files and directories in $HOME were shown on the desktop. So I wanted to get the folder back. What is the recommended way to achieve this? I edited ~/.config/xdg-user-dirs.dir and added the correct variable. But I guess there must be some other (more easy?) way.
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By accident I've removed some folders (they were empty) in my home folder. I've created a new ones but they doesn't have proper icons etc... how can I recreate them step by step?
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When I create a bootable USB stick (Ubuntu) on Windows, does it mean that the changes that I will do (let's say save a new file called "abc.txt" on the Ubuntu desktop) will those changes be reflected the next time I boot this USB on some other computer (I will see the file "abc.txt" on the Ubuntu desktop)?  Next one might be a pretty stupid question but here it is:  Will it use the computer's RAM or use the space left on the USB as RAM.  Thanks
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How exactly would I rename a USB drive?  I've read that you can go into the Disk Utility, click on Edit Partition, and there is an option to rename the label but I can't click in the area to rename.  Is there any other way?
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Recently I accidentally did rm on a set of files and it got me thinking where exactly these files end up?  That is to say, when working with a GUI, deleted files go to the Trash. What's the equivalent for rm and is there a way of undoing an rm command?