Recover Files Using Window’s “Previous Version” Property

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Have you ever encountered that due to some bug in your software the imporant file has been deleted or overwritten?  May be that file could be important data logged in the production or could be your old source code.  Do you know that windows has some capabilities to recover those missed files?

Recently I encountered such issue.  My own holy software which passed through all unit test cases, somehow misbehaved in the production site.  It adds more awkward moment if customer sees that issue and says “OMG..! My data are lost..!  Where is my data?“.

A quick google search on recovering windows files gave me a relief that Microsoft Windows in itself has some recovery given that if the restore points are configured in that Windows.  Since it’s production PC, all those restore points are taken care by IT and I’m at big relief that I could recover the data till last date.

How to do it?

  1. Just go to the Properties of your folder/file in which you lost your data.
  2. Go to Previous Versions in the property tabs to see the historical data available for that folder/file
  3. Choose the date at which you belive the data is available and
  4. Click on the Copy button at the bottom to copy that dated version to a new location.

How to take care of this in future?

  • Don’t rely on this for every time.  For your source code, version control or source control like SVN/Git/Hg always better solution.  They store each historical points you want whenever you commit.
  • Add some backup logic to the code which keeps the backup of such important data.
  • More suggestions are welcome..

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