[CRITAL-HELP] File Content Lost When Save

Xueping Kong

Hi,
I have a .TXT file which is around 16KB which is opened in Notepad++ all the time.

Yesterday, I didn’t notice that my harddisk was full (0 bytes left). And I made some amendment on the file and used Ctrl+S to save this file, a popup asking to switch to Administrative mode to escalator access and I clicked NO, suddenly I found the content of this file became empty and file size is 0 byte.

This file is very important for me and what I have tried:

undo the modification: strangely, the UNDO button is invalid (no option to get previous version)
Check Notepad++ auto-backup folder: unfortunately I didn’t enable this feature, so there is not backup there
Check Windows Temp folder: I have checked all files there, but no luck

**Please advice how to get back the previous file content, thanks a lot.
**
OS: Windows 10
Notepad++: v7.5.9 (64-bit), build time: Oct 14 2018 - 15:19:55

Alan Kilborn

@Xueping-Kong

It is a…sad…story. Sadly, I’ve heard it before. It would be interesting to know why Notepad++ does this.

Alan Kilborn

There may be help coming!

See https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/pull/5659

Meta Chuh

@Xueping-Kong

There may be help coming!

note that this might only prevent notepad++ from displaying a saved status.
but it does not bring back your file !

once your file is gone, due to zero space on disk, it’s gone.

Alan Kilborn

@Meta-Chuh

Yes, of course I meant help for future sufferers; not much to be done for the OP of this thread! Sorry for any confusion, or false excitement on the part of the OP!

pnedev

@Xueping-Kong ,

Unfortunately it is not possible to recover your file.
You can try with data recovery software (“un-deleter”) like Recuva but the chances are close to zero.

The problem will be fixed in the future versions of Notepad++ I hope.

I’m really sorry for your data loss.

pnedev

@Alan-Kilborn said:

It would be interesting to know why Notepad++ does this.

I filed a new issue describing the cause.