Railworks America

Unfortunately, early this morning whilst doing the final finishes to a building, I made two critical errors which caused major problems.

The major one was some sort of attempt to move a file to the desktop. However, I seemed to had an incorrect perception in relation to mouse position. Thinking that it was above the icon, I attempted to move the file to the desktop from the folder. However, I screwed this up and ended up moving a vital folder to what must have been the recycle bin by accident. Not knowing what was going on because I didn't look at the top of the screen initially, I eventually restarted the PC to end the wait for the transfer.

After realising what happened, I tried system restore. Unfortunately though, it is not working due to a problem with a registry restore point or something. Is there anything I can do to recover these files that got deleted by accident?

Can you see them in the recycle bin?

No, only what was moved to the bin in the time the transfer was active before it got ended. The files that weren't transferred seem to have vanished completely.

Then I'm afraid you're SOL.

Yeah I'm guessing because you didn't let the process finish and rebooted, it just vanished.

You have 2 possible options. Either specialized software to undelete files... or if that doesn't work.... have the drive sent out to a computer forensics company if you need it that badly. And for any reasonable chance of a full file recovery, the data blocks that hold the actual contents of any of the file must not have been overwritten since deletion. So you would need to stop using the drive now in order to increase the chances that the actual file data is still intact and doesn't get overwritten. The other outcome can be that forensics might only provide you with a partial file recovery.

Sometimes forensics can recover a full file that has been partially overwritten, but it's very hard to do. An overwrite can leave a weak "ghost like" residual of the original data (on blocks that are positioned laterally to the sides of the original block for example) that can be recovered and pieced back together.

It is similar in concept to a magnetic cassette tape with a song that's been recorded over a 2nd time with a new song and the original song can still be heard faintly in the background... especially during quiet passages of the new recording. That's either due to a poor erase head or lack of one... or... it is echoes of the original song that bled out into the magnetic material on either side of the main track channel that the playback tape head can still faintly pick up.

That's why special delete software (like "Eraser") was designed to delete the data by overwriting the same blocks multiple times with random data so forensics have a hard or even impossible chance of recovering that ghost data.

Otherwise as Hack said....you are SOL.

Fortunately, I managed to restore a previous version of the folder from last night which contains virtually everything that was lost. I've also moved the recycle bin which caused the initiation of the error to another place on the desktop.

However, the remaining disk space on my PC has halved. The size of the folder was around 350GB, and the unused space on my PC was around 840 GB. Now it's dropped to around 400. What is this caused by?

That's a good question. I'm not sure. Have you checked to see if you somehow have 2 copies of this folder or files from it on your hard drive somewhere? I know it's an estimated 350GB Vs. 440GB, but the fact they are kinda sorta in the ballpark (most average people's folders don't come even close to those sizes) makes me suspect some level of duplication happened. Have you tried emptying (recycle) the trashcan if anything is there to empty to free up the space? Just throwing out things to try. Cuz losing 440GB of space just doesn't happen everyday unless it's jam packed with hours of HD video. That stuff can eat up disk space in a hurry like nothing else can.

I've checked the recycle bin size. It's a fraction of the size of the mystery file. Whilst the suspect seems to be like a ghost of the recovered folder, I can't find a duplicate of it anywhere on the PC.

If there's a way to access the hidden area where the old version was recovered from, there could be something in there even, but I'm just not sure.

I don't know what to do, or really where to look.

Windows Explorer is horrible in at least 2 ways:
- you are never quite sure what exactly is selected if you are in folders view with two panes;
- it is very easy to drop a file or folder in a random place and lose it.

I suspect the latter happened: your files are hidden somewhere in your folder structure.
If you remember the name of a file, use the search tool from the root of the drive.
Otherwise, explore manually from the root. right-click on each folder and look at the properties. If the size is higher than 350 GB, opne this folder and continue exploring.

"Fortunately, I managed to restore a previous version of the folder from last night which contains virtually everything that was lost."

Look here for the names of what you need. Make sure it's in the right place. Delete the rest of it if it's a duplicate of something else. As Chacal said you can determine this by using the search tool. It will find all the duplicates.

Found the cause. Think about all the hilarious Mr Bean/Simpsons/other comedy moments you remember that stand out to you, wait a few seconds, take a deep breath, and then read this. .....

It turns out that the critical folder was actually accidentally copied to the RW assets folder instead of the shape export on the desktop due to an error with the mouse.

Somehow, the name for this dreaded nightmare of a building I spent half a day or more trying to fix to get it rendering properly in TS actually somehow got created as a folder name for the then missing desktop folder and moved to RW/scenery/buildings. After an analysis, I'll be able to delete the folder now and restore the disk space on my PC.

I'll definitely be posting an image of this ( ) of a building when it's finally finished. Considering I've had a bad day today, i feel like doing an animation of it burning down :P. The TS version not the real one lol.

Here's a screenshot of the dreaded building that caused the issue, which took many hours of agonising work to import through 3DC and into the sim (mainly texturing issues). Anyhow, it's finally rendered in TS pretty much how I wanted it to render, excluding the corrugated roof which I left out.



Finally, I can move onto to the next building......

Nice job. Glad you got past your problems. We have to remember we are always one click from big trouble on these wonderful and at the same time cursed devices.

I forgot to say, another horrible thing in Windows Explorer is that, when trying to drag-amd-drop something on a target folder, it is possible that the folder will move unexpectedly!

For example, while you're carefully putting your mouse cursor on the target folder, WE will suddenly open it and, if it has sub-folders, will display them in the left pane, which mat make your target folder move up or down outside the visible list.

Suddenly moving a target is, in itself, a bad idea in any situation (this is why the dentist asks you to stay still), so it is hard to imagine why someone at Microsoft thought this would be a good idea.

I avoid dragging and dropping for this very reason. I just select what I want and choose cut or copy depending on what I intend to do with the files. I then click on my target location or folder and then paste. This method avoids mistakes like yours. Cuz if your finger slips off your mouse button for any reason or reduced finger pressure happens during dragging, headaches and disasters can happen as a result.