How to Recover Overwritten or Replaced files  

How to Recover Overwritten or Replaced Photos, Excel, Word files

Updated on Jun 17, 2024 | by Gabe

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I recently experienced an issue where I edited an Excel file and accidentally replaced the old version with the new one, only to realize later that some data from the old version wasn't transferred to the new one. The problem is that the old version is now gone, and I'm struggling to recover the overwritten file on my Windows system.

My wife accidentally overwrote photos on the computer by saving them with the same file name as existing ones on the SD card, resulting in the new photos replacing the original ones on the computer.

Losing files due to accidental deletion or overwriting can be a disaster, but knowing how to recover replaced or overwritten files can be a lifesaver.

Any Possibility to Recover Overwritten or Replaced Files?

As a non-As a tech-savvy user, I can attest that most people struggle to understand how engineers recover lost files or data before they explain the recovery method in detail. Despite following some forum suggestions, such as selecting a file, right-clicking, and checking the "Previous Version" tab, I found it didn't work for me. Engineers suggested stopping writing new data on the hard drive once important files were overwritten, and the more files recovered, the less new data should be written to storage devices like Flash Cards, SD Cards, USB drives, or hard disks. This is because the original files are still stored on the hard drive, even if they're invisible, and can be recovered using tools like Deep Data Recovery. However, if new data is written, it can cover the original files, so it's essential to refrain from writing new data to the computer before rescuing the lost files. Some useful programs can scan the entire drive and recover overwritten files, and I'll introduce one of them in detail.

Your Safe & Effective Overwritten File Recovery Software

(Trust Score 4.7 by 2693 Users)
  • It enables recovery of overwritten, replaced, or corrupted files, including Word documents, photos, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, videos, and audio files.
  • A data recovery tool can recover overwritten data from various storage devices, including hard disks, SSDs, USB drives, memory cards, external hard drives, and more.
  • Faster and more reliable file recovery is now available under Windows 11/10/7/8/XP/Vista and Mac OS X 10.6 and later.

Steps for How to Retrieve Overwritten Flies.

1. To recover files from an external hard drive, a non-tech user should first connect the external storage device to their computer and then launch a professional overwritten file recovery tool. This tool is necessary as manual recovery without software is not feasible for a non-tech user. By running the software on the computer, it can help recover the files from the external hard drive.

2.Select the location where the original files are overwritten or replaced, then click "Scan" button to start scan and recover overwritten files. It will list all files found.

overwritten file recovery

3.When the scan is over, you can choose "path", "type" or "time" to filter the file to find the file you want. When dealing with a large number of files, click the "Search" icon on the right and enter keywords to quickly locate the desired file. Once found, click the "Recover" button to save and recover any overwritten or replaced files.

recover overwritten file

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