# Lost pendrive, can I recover files from autosave



## fernipascual (Dec 8, 2011)

Hello:

My son list his pendrive where he has all his school files.  He was working on some Excel files that he save on his pendrive.

Is there a chance that these are saved somewhere on the hard drive in auto save?


----------



## xenou (Dec 8, 2011)

Autosave files are only temporary files that Excel uses during a session (if a crash occurs it will look for these files).  Unfortunately they are not saved permanently the way true backups are - so, you won't find them except (maybe) by bringing the drive to a disaster recovery specialist to search for deleted files.


----------



## Derek Brown (Dec 9, 2011)

I agree that it is very unlikely that you will be able to recover the files from the laptop/PC.
Office 2010 introduced a feature to recover 'unsaved' files that would have been autosaved during the session but they will only be kept for about 4 days. Details can be found at: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386994,00.asp
However, you are talking about several files and the process requires that they have been changed and then closed without saving after being open for the autosave period of time.


----------



## xenou (Dec 9, 2011)

Note: For students a good backup strategy for writing papers and other documents is to email a copy of your work to yourself whenever you've done more work on it.


----------



## RonaldD (Dec 9, 2011)

xenou said:


> Note: For students a good backup strategy for writing papers and other documents is to email a copy of your work to yourself whenever you've done more work on it.



 That's a very good advice, I've also been telling that to my son once in a while for him to have a good backup file.


----------



## fernipascual (Dec 12, 2011)

Thanks all.  He found the lost pendrive and all his files!  I have been asking my son to back up his files to the hard drive, which by the way backs up to a seagate external hard drive.

He learned a good lesson!  Let's see how long it lasts.


----------



## RonaldD (Dec 12, 2011)

Good, an external hard drive is also great for it.


----------



## SydneyGeek (Dec 14, 2011)

It's a really hard habit to break but I tell my kids NOT to work directly on the USB drive. They now work on the hard drive and pull a copy to the USB. Flash memory has a limited number of read-write cycles so it's not the place to be doing heaps of editing.

Denis


----------



## RonaldD (Dec 14, 2011)

SydneyGeek said:


> Flash memory has a limited number of read-write cycles so it's not the place to be doing heaps of editing.
> 
> Denis



 I agree, and sometimes they are also misplaced and lost because of their size.


----------



## PCRIDE (Dec 14, 2011)

xenou said:


> Autosave files are only temporary files that Excel uses during a session (if a crash occurs it will look for these files).  Unfortunately they are not saved permanently the way true backups are - so, you won't find them except (maybe) by bringing the drive to a disaster recovery specialist to search for deleted files.



If they are not deleted, they open with excel. It may not have the excel icon but it will open and I have saved my butt on this a few times.

Also anytime you open a file in outlook it creates a temp file with a strange name in the temp directory, you can recover files this way too. Takes time to find the right one but its possible.

For what ever reason you can't browse to this hidden folder, even with hidden files shown.


----------



## fernipascual (Dec 8, 2011)

Hello:

My son list his pendrive where he has all his school files.  He was working on some Excel files that he save on his pendrive.

Is there a chance that these are saved somewhere on the hard drive in auto save?


----------



## PCRIDE (Dec 14, 2011)

Need to mooove everything to the "CLOUD" man... whoot!


----------

