Data Recovery - Activesync is a piece of ****!!!! ARGGGGG!!!

Hello all,

Sorry for the crazy title - I'm pretty angry at technology right now, almost on the verge of wanting to go back to good old foolproof paper and pen. I ran out of disk space on my computer's first HD so I told it to move My Documents to my other drive. When I synced my HPC, it figured that the Synced files folder was empty and that it should go ahead, without prompting me, to wipe the folder off my HPC too. Now I know that I should know to backup, but Microsoft should design Async to at least prompt before wiping everything off your Synced files folder. I lost a bunch of school assignments (luckily I'd printed most of them out) and some Chem labs. Arrrrrggg! I'm leaving the H/PC unused for the moment, hoping that any of you can give me a hand. I want to try to recover the files that were wiped. Professionals will have you pay $500 to do it; I'm a student so you figure I don't have that money (thank God it wasn't essential data, I've DEFINITELY learned my lesson! Daily backups from now on!!!!). Any ideas on how to recover the data from my HPC that are cheap, relatively simple, and effective? Any help would be appreciated. I need a punching bag!!!! but I believe someone out there has some insight and if not I'll suck it up and be more careful how I backup my files. Anyways, I look forward to all replies,

God Bless,

Steve R.
Jornada 690/P3 650 Mhz/Win2k
Calgary, Alberta

Sorry to hear about that Steve...

When you moved My Documents, did it have any of your files? Or were they all on your HPC only?

Were the files stored on flash? If it was on RAM only, I don't think it's recoverable...

Other than that, I have no real suggestions I don't use sync folders personally, but that's just me.

THis is my one pet peeve of ActiveSync: it does not require confirmation before doing unbelievably stupid things.

As posted above, you might be lucky if you've got stuff on a compact flash card. Files are stored using the FAT file system on CF cards, so undelete programs will work and could recover your files. Do *NOT* write anything to that card until you try undeleting stuff! Without delving into too much detail, the FAT format uses a file allocation table to store a list of what files are stored where on the disk, and when you delete stuff, the system just removes an entry from the table, but does not remove the actual content which is still on the disk.

If stuff was on the internal disk, things are less optimistic: the file system is contained within Windows CE's Object Store, which dynamically shifts memory around on a transaction-by-transaction basis. There might be a chance that the content is still there, but you will need to find some software that accesses the internal structures of the Windows CE Object Store. I don't know of any stuff that does this, however you might want to ask Henri if he's got any ideas. Nearest thing I can think of is RamFiles by "Denny", listed on Henri's website. Might be worth a try, but on the other hand using the machine might trash the RAM area that your files were on.

Catch 22.

Good luck,
Nick.

Sometimes its great to be a Linux user

If you have a compactflash reader on your pc, you could try to recover files with some programs out there (the screensavers at www.techtv.com/screensavers have just reviewed some) though I have never heard of being able to recover files on flash media, I thought that its way of storing data wouldn't allow for recovery. A better chance is to try those recovery programs on your pc and try to get files from there if there was a copy on there. And though backups are a good idea, instead of making them daily you could save your files into an alternative location, e.g. anywhere else than My Documents, when I used Windows I had a folder called Andrew's Folder (hehe). I would store everything there, and copy directly to the handheld and back as needed, bypassing the shaky Syncronized Files folder, and it would be easy to move my files around. You could also share that folder on the network and copy files from your hpc right to there, which is a very reliable way of doing things.

Wow! I think God can fix computers! I was sorting files on my PC and presto! I found a folder of a copy of my synch folder with all my lost files on it! I honestly don't remember putting it there or copying it; I thought I'd never synced my latest files. But I got everything back, thank you God! I guess I've learned my lesson on this one: make backups!!! ...and I won't forget it!
Thanks for your replies; I don't need to search my RAM now but if anybody comes across some sort of utility to do so in the future, please post it! I'm sure there's others out there with my plea!

Thanks and God Bless all,

Stephen R.
Jornada 690
OriNOCO WiFi