How to restore deleted files/fix zip file Options

[Maccabee]

I cant believe what i have just done!
I had a folder that had about 15gb of vital files and I put them all into a zip file. I never opened the zip file and I deleted the folder with all the files. It told me they were to big to fit in the recycle bin so it deleted them permanently.
I then went to open the xip file and had the biggest shock of my life.
I got the warning: The compressed (zipped) Folder is invalid or corrupted.
I cant believe it. Worst of all they werent my files! They were my brothers! I tried a system restore to earlier that day, but no luck. Is there anything I can do! I think I might die/or be killed if I dont get those files back!

[emberfly]

[illriginal]

lol

As for your problem... OP. I wish I could help you but I'm not in the mood to spend 5 days tryin to assist you. System restore normally works but if you already restored your system to a previous restore point, you just made it even worse. Good luck.

If you were in Linux, once you delete it from the trash can... it's gone forever.

[mipadi]

You may be able to recover the file using an undelete utility. Here's why:

1. When you create a file, the OS makes an entry in the file system's allocation table that specifies a number of things, such as the size of the file, its creation times, its permissions, and the actual location of the first block of data on the disk.
2. Then the OS writes the data to the disk.
3. When you delete a file, the OS removes the entry from the allocation table, but it doesn't actually delete the the data from the disk. The OS just "forgets" that the file exists, so it can re-use the physical, on-disk blocks sometime in the future.

So if you catch your mistake in time, it's usually pretty easy to recover the file using an undelete utility. I'm not familiar with such utilities in Windows-land, but a quick Google search should turn up an appropriate undelete utility for Windows.

Now, if you've used the system for "a while", it's possible that another file may have been written to the disk in the same physical blocks; in that case, you're out of luck.

System restore normally works but if you already restored your system to a previous restore point, you just made it even worse. Good luck.

Nah. System restore isn't a way to recover lost user files. System restore only deals with system files, and won't even touch user files.

If you were in Linux, once you delete it from the trash can... it's gone forever.

Nah. Deleting (unless you use a utility like shred) only removes a file's entry from the file system directory; it doesn't do anything with the data on disk, so it's possible to recover lost files with an undelete utility, if the actual blocks on the disk haven't been written over yet.