Recovering Deleted or Overwritten Files

Owned by Joel Whitney
Last updated: Jul 19, 2022

The information below is specific to the College of Law.

Files or folders stored on the G: drive are backed up twice daily.  The backup is retained for 30 days.  Files or folders which have been inadvertently deleted from the G: drive can be restored using the process below.

  • Navigate to the containing folder
    • Example
      • If a file was inadvertently deleted from G:\LAW\ITSS\Scans, navigate to G:\LAW\ITSS\Scans
      • If the folder "Scans" (G:\LAW\ITSS\Scans) was inadvertently deleted from the ITSS folder, navigate to G:\LAW\ITSS
  • Right-click an empty space within the containing folder, then choose Properties
  • Click the Previous Versions tab in the Properties dialog
  • Note the timestamps of the backups and select the version you wish to restore
  • You may now Open the backup to view the files contained within or Restore the backup to completely overwrite the current version of the folder with the previous version
    • Opening
      • Opening the backup allows you to select individual files, which you can then drag to the current version of the folder or otherwise save to an appropriate location
      • Note: Do not simply edit and save documents to the opened backup folder,  as this folder will be deleted after 30 days
    • Restoring
      • Restoring completely replaces the current version of the folder with the version stored as a backup
      • Doing so overwrites any changes that have happened since the backup
        • This means that inadvertently deleted files will be restored, but...
        • This also means that any intentional changes made since the backup will also be overwritten