i need help getting my files back

[dante the demon prince]

my brother deleted all my files for ff8 and i dont want to replay it untill i have beeten it so plz help

[Leeza]

*moves to Help*

[Cid]

deleted = gone forever.

[rubah]

Unless it was for the PC, in which case you could try one of those programs that recover information deleted but not written over.

You haven't defragmented since then have you? xD if not, don't :]

if it was the ps version, then yeah they're gone:]

[Llednar Twem]

*licks Cid's feet*

There is no way to restore the files.
No way, whatsoever.

[Samuraid]

There is a way to restore the files.
There is a way, whatsoever.

When files are deleted from your computer's HDD, they are only marked as free space, the data is still there. They are only deleted when another file comes along and writes over the space.

As long as nothing has overwritten the data on the disk, you can use certain programs to recover the deleted file.

If your game was stored on the flash memory of game system memory card, however, there's very little chance, if any, that you'll recover that data.

[Dr Unne]

If you delete something from a hard drive and immediately stop what you're doing and run some kind of recovery program, you have a chance at getting your data back. If it's been a while, it's possible (probable?) that you've overwritten the file with another file by now, in which case you're screwed. For something as replaceable as a video game save file, it's likely not worth the effort.

There are also forensic companies that can get files back (somehow) from hard drives even if you format the thing and overwrite the whole drive with 0's. One of my professors said he worked for the government and when they throw away hard drives, they erase them, de-magnetize them (or over-magnetize them? no idea), sand-blast the platters and then dissolve the platters' surface with some kind of corrosive. Not sure of the truth of that, but it's actually pretty hard to permanently dispose of the data on a hard drive.

[Cid]

Well, I was assuming he was talking about a PS1 memory card.

[dante the demon prince]

are any of you farmikliar with conversion its called i put my ps1 files on my comp by means of a floppy disk

[Mirage]

I've heard that the police and stuff can recover data that is overwritten over 10 times. Ofcourse, that wouldn't be very cheap to do.