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I am writing both my PhD manuscript and a scientific paper.

Instead of writing the latter in Overleaf, I chose to do it on my TexStudio. I made a huge mistake of copy/paste the template of the paper to the second chapter (that took me three months to write), saved, closed the file and went to sleep. This morning I realized what I did... Is there any way I can recover my chapter PLEASE??

Wallflower
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3 Answers3

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You have a few options:

  • TexStudio may have cached history and allows going back before the fateful save and exit
  • Data recovery on the drive can find the bits of the previous chapter that were not overwritten by the new data
  • Your computer has cloud sync/backup software (such as OneDrive or Google Drive or iCloud) and you were working in a directory that is protected by this

I am not familiar with TexStudio and you mention it is an old version. If file/edit history is cached this will be documented and will be an option or tool within this program.

Data recovery requires several things: YOU have written anything else to the disk since overwriting this file, the OS hasn't written anything else to the disk since, recovery software can find the bits on the disk that previously belonged to the file, and none of the myriad other factors impacting this work against you.

Hopefully you have a cloud backup/sync tool actively running on your system, as this is the method most likely to work best. Going forward, you should definitely have such a tool going forward, if you do not have one currently. If you DO have such a tool running, you will need to look up how to use it to restore to a previous file version.

music2myear
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Don't use the disk while you're trying to recover it! Writing to the disk may overwrite your data.

Methods for recovering deleted files :

  • Search the Recycle Bin for files with names identical or similar to the deleted file
  • Restore from Control Panel > File History (if turned on)
  • Restore previous version of the file by in Explorer, navigate to the file, right-click and select "Restore previous versions" (if enabled)
  • Try Windows File Recovery
  • Use a deleted files recovery product :
harrymc
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I hope you have luck - it may be possible to recover the old file data even if you saved a new version, because the new data don't necessarily overwrites the old data - see harrymc answer.

For your personal backup, in addition to Git, I think you should buy an external HDD, keep it plugged to an USB port and enable the Windows File History to take a snapshot every 10 minutes of any changes to your important files.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3658132/how-to-use-file-history-windows-10-windows-11.html

Rafael
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