Data Recovery Files Missing After Crash

Question

My laptop wasn't powering on and when it did I got a "Restarted because of a problem" error screen and when it booted back up the .ai file I was working in and had saved was gone.

I looked for the path where my data recovery file should've been and there's nothing there.

I ran a data recovery program and I can see the missing data, I know it's the data to the file I was working in from the timestamp June 21st, that was the last time I was tinkeing in it.

I was hoping I might be able to restore the missing data back under the file path it originated and restarted illustrator to trigger the 'recovered' file but the system doesn't give me write access...

Is there a way to salvage this at all?

Monika Gause · Answer

What you could try: make a copy of the file you are seeing with your tool and move it somewhere else to secure it.

Launch Illustrator. When you launch it and it finds something in the Receovery folder, it will try to recover it. It will show a popup and ask if it should do that. You have to say yes. Otherwise it will delete the recovery file. When it fails to recover it, then that's that.

File recovery is not a backup solution. And should not be used as such. It can spare you the hassle of recreating the last 20 minutes. But don't ever try and rely on it for more than that timespan.

You said the computer was without power. If it runs out of power while saving that is the absolute worst moment for power outage. And that includes the file recovery.

Save early. Save often. Save different versions. And then you can use file recovery.

That said: maybe @Anshul_Saini can help you with the copy of the recovery data you have. You can hope for a miracle of some sort, but the chances are slight.

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