Recovering a .dat file

[TheSuspect]

Long story short, I was moving a few files around trying to back them up, only to find I hit control + z too many times and ended up wiping the original. I've tried using recovery software and I managed to get the original back, only to find that it's 11mb of empty lines. Notepad reads empty lines, but you can backspace, as if it's invisible. Notepad ++ reads it as "nul nul nul nul" etc. Is there any hope for that file or is it permanent...

[Mira Yurizaki]

If you've overwritten a file, chances are its contents are toast because the file system will just overwrite the blocks it was occupying.

[TheSuspect]

1 hour ago, M.Yurizaki said:

If you've overwritten a file, chances are its contents are toast because the file system will just overwrite the blocks it was occupying.

I'm not sure if anything was overwritten. If it's just empty blocks, is it toast?

[luckydog32]

You can give recuva a shot, in my experience its been hit or miss with it. But as long as it hasn't been overwritten it might work.

 

https://www.piriform.com/recuva