help! i lost a file... 8[

[przxqgl]

i'm currently using trusty tahr and LibreOffice 4.2.8.2

i have a cloud drive, on which i store important information, including a LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet. Calc will not open the spreadsheet on the cloud drive, so when i want to work on it, i move it to my local drive. when i'm done working on it, i move it back to my cloud drive...

except this time, when i moved it back, it vanished, and now can not be found anywhere...

i realise it's a long shot, but can anybody tell me how it can be recovered? it's a fairly important document, storing 5 years worth of information which i would be disappointed to lose...

[Snowhog]

Until someone with expertise replies, do NOTHING that would write to the cloud drive. NOTHING.

[oshunluvr]

photorec will likely recover it if it was deleted from your local drive, along with everything else on the drive.

By "cloud drive" you mean a service? Most of them have recovery services included. BTW, have you try LO again to see if it's listed as a "recoverable" file?

[Qqmike]

If you performed a "Save" while working on it on your hard drive, I would think PhotoRec can find it, or can find a recent working version of it.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

You have to take some minutes to study the how-to tips there.

[Qqmike]

If you go that route, and in case I'm not around later, if you wish to use this, I'll drop my idea of how to set up TestDisk/PhotoRec (they come together). This helps you keep everything together as you get files and reports from PhotoRec. Btw, I haven't used PhotoRec for maybe 5-10 years, so I'm rusty on it and would have to re-read the tips. (I have used TestDisk in the past couple years.) But people here seem to be able to catch on and run with it. As Snowhog says, try not to mess with that hard drive at all until you see if you can find that file.

Written for TestDisk but applies to PhotoRec:


Technical note: TestDisk

Downloading TestDisk/PhotoRec to a personal directory.

> Create a directory for it and download TestDisk into that folder:

Choose a directory to work in. Obvious choices might be your home or Desktop.
For the example, let's use /home/your_name/Desktop/TestDisk_here.
Next, download TestDisk (it includes PhotoRec) to that directory.
Download TestDisk/PhotoRec from the site
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download
Select Linux and the proper version for your computer.
Your browser may be set to download to Desktop, or you may be able to select the directory /home/your_name/Desktop/TestDisk_here for the download. In the former case, move the downloaded file testdisk-7.0.linux26-x86_64.tar.bz2 into the TestDisk_here folder.
> To extract the folder (and files) from the tar.bz2 file ...
> Starting in the folder TestDisk_here, right click on testdisk-7.0.linux26-x86_64.tar.bz2 and select Extract here.
You want to keep everything—the tar.bz2 and the extracted folder/files-- in the folder TestDisk_here because it will be simpler to manage and contained where you can work with it. It is also the folder you probably want PhotoRec to save the recovered files to if you use PhotoRec. TestDisk will place its log files there, also.

Explore the subfolder TestDisk_here/testdisk-7.0 to find the TestDisk executable (program), testdisk_static. That's the program you'll run.

At Konsole, change into /home/your_name/Desktop/TestDisk_here/testdisk-7.0 (where testdisk-7.0 is the final subdirectory containing the two executables testdisk_static and photorec_static), and then, to run TestDisk or PhotoRec from there:
sudo ./testdisk_static
Or,
sudo ./photorec_static
where the leading dot slash ./ means “the current working directory."
Or, this way:
cd into /home/your_name/Desktop/TestDisk_here and run
sudo testdisk-7.0/testdisk_static

You can easily keep the log files in TestDisk folder.

Using TestDisk: The tutorials at the website are sufficient if you study them carefully.
Step-by-Step
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

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[przxqgl]

@snowhog: that's not a problem. the cloud drive is written to only very rarely.

@ oshunluvr: no, i mean a cloud drive that only i can access, because i own it, and it is sitting on my desk in front of me. it has a network accessible file system which i can access from kubuntu (my desktop machine), macOS (my laptop) and iOS (my phone and tablet)... i suppose it is accessible by windoesn't, but i don't use it, so i don't know.

@Qqmike: i saved on my local disk before i moved it, so that's a good thing. i'll download photorec and see if it helps. at this point, if it doesn't, i'm resigned to letting the data go, so it doesn't matter whether or not it works, but i'm glad to see that there's hope.

i'll let you know what happens. thanks everyone! 8)

ETA: photorec is working, but it says it's going to take 5-1/2 hours to finish, so i probably won't know if it's been successful or not until tomorrow...

[Qqmike]

As I recall, to speed things up, you can limit the type of file(s) to search for. But sometimes it may not be obvious, except to an expert. For example, an .odt is a Zip Archive; as is an OpenOffice Spreadsheet.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/File_...ed_By_PhotoRec

[przxqgl]

well, it completely filled my local drive before informing me that it wasn't finished, and it didn't appear to find any .ods files at all... 8/

if there is some way to get PhotoRec to find ONLY the .ods or .odt files, i'm willing to try again, but, as i said, at this point, i'm prepared to say that the data is gone.

[Qqmike]

ods is a Zip Archive, which is what you want to search for.

[przxqgl]

i figured that part out... what was eluding me was the "File Options" which allowed me to select which files i wanted to recover. it's been going for an hour, and it says it has 3-1/4 hours left to go, and it hasn't found anything yet... keeping my fingers crossed.

[przxqgl]

once again, it totally filled up my local drive... it found two .zip files, neither of which contained the data i was looking for...

oh well. you can't win 'em all... 8/

[Qqmike]

Oh well! Sorry you lost it, but it sounds like you were prepared for this. I believe you've done a good job with this. But--usually--IME--it is possible to get most of your stuff back, assuming there was no activity (or very little) on that disk. I once deleted a whole collection of a hundred or so photos and got all but a few back. Well, anyway now you know about PhotoRec.