Today, I deleted a load of junk that was messing up my mother's computer. I don't know how I'm going to tell her I accidentally wiped out all of her wedding photos. FML
Collection
Fall
Dead leaves, the first cold of the season and an umbrella flipped inside out: fall, the season of grace.
Today, my computer stopped working. Me, the technology challenged one, decided to do a system recovery on it hoping that I could make it better. Turns out, system recovery means deleting all the files off the computer including family photos, music and assignments and starting fresh. FML
Today, my husband accidentally erased some pictures from our hard drive. No worries, nothing major: just everything from our wedding and the birth of our first child. FML
Today, I lost two terabytes' worth of photos to a friend's incompetence. He said he could save me some money and fix my slow computer for free. He ended up wiping the hard drive, and along with it, my photography portfolio from the last five years. FML
Today, I was trying to show my mother how much detail I'd put into a group project that I had to present tomorrow. I then deleted the project, thinking that I was just removing it from my phone. Everyone's research and my three days of hard work went with it. FML
Today, my parents got me a new computer for my birthday. They also took the liberty of throwing out my old computer, with 8 years of photos, videos, music, documents, emails, and bookmarks on it. But that's okay, I had a backup. They threw that out too. FML
Today, while trying to fix a corrupted USB hard drive with my wife’s computer I accidentally wiped her laptop drive instead of clearing the external drive. I’m not allowed on her computers anymore. FML
Today, I got a new computer because my old one crashed, deleting all music, photos, and documents. I still had all my music on my iPod though, and went to sync it to the new computer. By accident, my younger brother pulled the cord out before it was done, deleting all 3,000 songs forever. FML
Today, my external hard drive broke. My husband tried to fix it, and the computer told him he needed to format it. Apparently he didn't know what formatting does, so he did it. I'm a wedding photographer and had a full summer of unfinished wedding photography on there. FML
Today, I let my mother use my computer for school work. Later that day my mom asks me what's wrong with the computer. I look at it, only seeing a "Welcome to Windows XP" screen. She said that she saw a blue screen and pressed L and C when it asked her to. My mom managed to clear my hard drive. FML
Today, I accidentally deleted my landlord's pictures of his child's graduation, girlfriend, daughter, and vacation when he asked me to delete a video off his phone. FML
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Top comments
billyboef 10
I sure hope she has some kind of backup...
Migole 36
1. Perhaps you and your mother both should learn about the magic thing that is backup (external hdd, cloud whatever) 2. I hope you didn't touch the computer after you realized this and immedediately talked to a professional, because as long as you didn't overwrite the "free storage" they might still be saved
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Comments (105)
RA91 26
Um, I would just hide, lol
soulreaper12296 28
I can't remember how you do it. You can probably easily find it on youtube, but there's a way to restore a computer back to a previous point.
Mysterious_one 26
u can restore to a certain point only for the settings and installed apps.. windows won't restore files deleted
andyyyybruh 2
I made an account just to let you know that you can't completely delete things from a computer. If she doesn't have a back up and wants them back you can look up tutorials on how to get the files back or you could even hire someone to do it for you.
granCanyon 12
Of course you can. Once you overwrite it there's nothing left. The theory that you could recover some trace amount of data after one overwrite don't apply to modern hard drives. Actually even in the past it was just an academic theory. No one has ever recovered anything valuable from a overwritten disk.
Mysterious_one 26
u guys don't know what happen when u delete a file.. u only delete its shortcut from being accessed by the user.. it will be overwritten once somthing else is stored on the same cluster or bit.. all u have to do is just install an app like Backtolife .. and it will search for the deleted files
granCanyon 12
LOL shortcut? Nah. The file is just marked as deleted by the operating system. There's no shortcut. Which basically means that the clusters can be overwritten again.
granCanyon 12
Looks like people misunderstood what I meant in my previous comment so I'll explain it a little better. i'm not saying that clicking delete will delete the file. We all agree that it doesn't. But this doesn't mean that files can't be deleted. The process depends on the filesystem but in NTFS which is used by most people the metadata about all files is stored in the Master File Table file(well actually it's a bit more complicated than that but it doesn't matter in our case). One of the entries from the MFT file says if the file is active or deleted. Once you click delete and emty the recycle bin the operating system will edit the MFT and set the file metadata to deleted. The WHOLE file is still on the HDD! If you reset the metadata to active then the whole file will be available again! If you deleted some files a moment ago you will be able to restore everything(if you're not writing a lot to your HDD). But after a while the operating system will reuse this space and you won't be able to recover anything. There are old academic papers saying that it is theoretically possible to recover some data once the file is overwritten but nowadays it won't work! Modern disks are much different than what we had back in the days. Even the person who wrote the paper says it's impossible with modern drives.
mikaylahough 5
Just don't
hrhlovesrar 8
don't worry nothing is really deleted from a computer, the pictures can be recovered by a data recovery specialist.
Ki11erC 18
Providing they haven't been written over.
caseyt12 12
This is fixable. Just because a file is "deleted" does not mean its gone. look up how to restore the file, or even look up how to restore the computer to a date when the pictures were there.
juststephhere 23
She should at least have a backup or prints! Otherwise that sucks for you... Perhaps you can make it up to her.
may14th 26
this is why you don't use someone else's things without their permission
brand125 17
it never said they didnt have permission... for example: "hey son/daughter, youre better with computers so could you go try and speed mine up somehow?"
Pakawaka 2
Look up "Recuva" it might save you.
wvcheesehead 13
Recover my files is $70.00 but it will likely save your butt.
anticulas 12
Recuva is free, though. And it is used by professionals.
dezchild97 2
go to the recycle bin before you freak out to much
boskone 1
For further reference: most files under a couple gig will go to the recycle bin. Open it, find the file(s) you want, select and right-click on them, and then click restore. Or just restore all, and delete the rest of the cruft again...after ensuring there's nothing else important.