Stupidly I have overwritten by back up hard disc which had a directory containing several unique AVI files.

My system has a second drive on which I keep a clone of my boot drive - I use Acronis Drive Image 11 to backup my boot disc whenever I make and test specific changes.

Whenever I make a backup I restore it to my second drive so I always have a safe bootable backup drive. Unfortunately when I last did this I forgot I had said AVIs 'safely' stored on the boot partition of this drive.

I guess the directory and files would not have been overwritten as the boot files only occupy a small part of the partition - but the file headers would have been changed/overwritten.

Does anyone know if there is a file recovery utility which could recover these AVIs for me

I have used this on a chap at works PC after we rebuilt it for him and he then said all his families photos were on there.

Active@ UNDELETE Recover deleted files on NTFS FAT32. Data Recovery Software Windows XP VISTA 2003 NTFS FAT32 FAT.

You can scan it for free but to recover stuff you need to pay the $40.

As an aside if you have recently bought a Sandisk Extreme III SD card they come with some recovery software but I am noy sure how goos it is.

Good luck.

several unique AVI files.

Really ........................the mind boggles :P:)

Try Data Recovery Software to Undelete Files; Disk recovery; Recover Deleted Files

Reminds me of an e-mail that went out at uni regarding the video camera you could rent. The key line was:

"Please make sure all videos of an artistic nature are wiped before returning the camera."

Really ........................the mind boggles :P:)

Try Data Recovery Software to Undelete Files; Disk recovery; Recover Deleted Files

They are actually of a holiday 10 years ago on Madeira - an island that has changed significantly thanks to our taxes paying for new roads and other infrastructure (via our generous contributions to the EU budget).

They also represent over 100 hours of editing.

Have managed to recover about 1/3 of them using Recuva - a freeware prog - but it cant recover the the larger files. Looks like i will have to invest some cash in one of the above - but how can I be sure they will perform any better as the files can obviously be found but will be recovered OK, these are files typically around 2gb.

Does anyone have any experience of recovering files this large.

No need to explain to me mate ...................

I have used recover my files loads of times and it has always worked for me, provided the files aren't corrupted or the disc damaged it should have no trouble recovering them.

I can say for sure on the files size thing as I don't remember any large files I've recovered as such. Everything I've tried it's done so it may handle large files no problem. Maybe email the company and ask them. And don't write anything else to the disc in the mean time.

try CONVAR & PCinspector Data Recovery Datenrettung recupero dati datarecovery récupération données

Try Testdisk and Photorec 6.9 from here

TestDisk 6.9 Release - CGSecurity

HTH

The biggest problem you will have will be if you have written ANYTHING to the drive at all. If the disk has had any data written to it, then the chances of recovering anything large intact is virtually zero. Small files possibly, but it depends on where they were stored on the physical disk.

Thanks for the replys guys.

I have now tried several free progs and the free scans from some sold s/w.

Unfortunately all report the same files found with the same file lengths - all showing the larger files truncated so I have to assume my actions caused more damage than I had hoped - back to originals and many more hours of editing.

Shame, but when you've finished editing them buy one of these

Hard Drives - External Desktop Drives - Ebuyer

put them on it and then leave them alone

So cheap now...

Sadly I already have one on which I store the Vids once finished - will have to learn to back up big jobs in progress