How to get a document back after it randomly wipes itself?
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I was editing a very long list of notes I have and Notepad++ gave me an error message while saving, something along the lines of “an error occurred while saving, please try again”.
Since I am a person who does CRTL+S every 10 seconds; I thought I was fine. I just clicked off of it, copied over what I hadn’t saved so I could just close the document and then add it in again and hope the error didn’t occur again. But then when I opened it again, THE ENTIRE DOCUMENT WAS BLANK.
I had written thousands of words as I write very detailed notes. This isn’t a case of un-doing either as it has reset the document as if I had just created it; and with that, the memory of itself was wiped if that makes any sense. I have obviously looked this up in several different ways but no one else seemed to have this random problem of a document wiping itself after a small saving error. Most of the articles and tutorials just told me to go to my backups folder in AppData but I only have a backup from a random Notepad++ file I had about a year ago.
I seriously don’t know what to do and honestly am quite scared that I have lost this document forever as nothing seems to work. I’ve tried backups, previous versions, restore points and everything else I can think of. I thought I was very safe as I save my documents frantically every chance I get but apparently not. I should have made a backup but I thought that would be silly as this is just a text file of notes. It hasn’t wiped any other of the files that I have open but if I make a small change to them and try to save, a similar error pops up and I do not want to lose them at all.
Is there any other way I can get this file back as I really need it soon. If I ever get this file back I promise you I will make a backup of every file I ever create. I have never had this error before and as a side note, it tried to launch the notepad in Administrator Mode and even in there, it was empty. I seriously need your help!P.S. Sorry for the long post.
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Hello @Brad-Dorrian ,
I’m truly sorry for your problems but unfortunately there is no much you can do.
The only thing I can think of is to try with unerasing software.Your issue has the same root cause as this one:
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/17632/crital-help-file-content-lost-when-save/6Please read at the end, I have given a link to Recuva - software for recovering files after deletion.
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@pnedev
Thank you so much for the quick reply. I am trying the Recuva software and I am really sad to hear that I might not get it back. I did check and my hard drive was full, but all my other hard drives weren’t. This seems like a fault of the software to just wipe the text file when it sees that one hard disk is full. It didn’t even make a backup in a different drive or didn’t even just tell me that my storage was full and couldn’t save. If it had done any of that, I would be fine. I would have either found the backup in the other drive or copied over what I hadn’t saved and then placed it in the other drive. I can understand this issue if the person only had one hard disk on their computer but even then, it didn’t need to wipe itself clean without any warning. I can only imagine how someone would feel if it was an extremely important document they lost and not just some notes for some assignment. I can almost get over the fact that I lost so much work and so much time, but I can not get over the fact that this seamlessly pure upgrade from the original notepad just made one of the biggest mistakes that a program like this could possibly make.
All I’m saying is, that this shouldn’t be a feature. Make a better warning system or scan for other drives or even make a really small backup somewhere, even if you have to override some old temp files.
Seriously though, thank you for your help and I will let you know if the Recuva software helped! -
You are right I agree with you.
That’s why I have filed an issue in Notepad++'s repository describing the problem and hopefully the author/contributors will fix it in the next Notepad++ version.I hope you will be able to restore your lost data.
BR
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@pnedev
Sadly the Recuva software didn’t work and I do hope that they fix this in the next update. I also turned on the “backup every 7 seconds” feature and the “simple backup on save” which wasn’t on by default but now this should mean it doesn’t happen again. Thank you for all your help and quick replies. -
@Brad-Dorrian said:
but now this should mean it doesn’t happen again
I would advise you to keep a separate copy of your important data anyway because the backup is not perfect either.
Again, sorry for your data loss.