I lost a big project backup

[Chris Edgell]

I made the mistake of doing loads of additional work on the backup copy. Now somehow that has gone, (I must have pressed save on the wrong version...) Any suggestions on where I could find the backup on my xubunto operating system? Hope I have worded all right.

[austinpsycho]

if you hit the wrong button and saved in a different format; it should be in your home directory ~/
or if your like me and save it in documents; check there; lets just hope you did save the changes somewhere

[WRDN]

Assuming you didn't delete it, the first place to look is in your personal home folder at /home/username.

If you know the name of the folder/file, or the extension, then you can use the find tool:

find /home/username -name '*.tar.gz'

As an example, the above command will search for all files in /home/username, that have the extension .tar.gz

[Chris Edgell]

I can click on "Home" and read through all the file folders and documents and do not see anything about anything called "Prayer".

I have to go and see how the extension looks (if I go through all the steps and close up one file without saving and see how that automatic backup file looks.

Thank both of you for your responses. As far as going to that place with the code, would that be typed into the terminal...I'm not just new, I'm almost computer illiterate, so it requires absolute simplicity to instruct me.

[WRDN]

Yep, it needs to be entered into the Terminal found at Applications > Accessories > Terminal. If the backup is called Prayer, then replace the command in post 3 with:

find /home/username -name 'Prayer*'

Or search your entire machine for files with that name

find / -name 'Prayer*'

Note that, this will include all mounted media (e.g. external hard disk drive's).

[tgalati4]

What was the program that you were using? Each program has different naming conventions for its backup files.

If you open a backup copy and work on it then close it, and then open the current copy, the backup gets immediately overwritten. If that is what happened, then it's nearly impossible to recover the data without doing a forensic disk recover.

There are tools in linux to do that, but they can take several hours. Probably exceeding the amount of work that you have put in already.

[Chris Edgell]

tgalati4, I was using AbiWord. I think you described what I did. I did have a "moment of truth" in passing, telling me to get the new stuff on the original instead of using the one called backup. Fortunately, I had finished the project (well, it was relatively big, for me, at 20 pages). I had finished it and run a copy, but had wanted to send it to my co-worker and now must do a lot of retyping and re-grouping of info.

However, WRDN, as I tried your procedure, I discovered that I could not do it correctly enough to even find something that I knew where it was..wondering, if I show you what I typed in, can you tell me what I was doing wrong for that procedure to work in the future. I typed:
find/ -chris June 29th. 2009.abiw(then I pressed enter)

Thanks

[halitech]

1 thing to remember when looking for files is Prayer is not the same as prayer on a unix type system.

Try opening Nautilus and press CTRL + H so it shows hidden files. I think the backup files are usually hidden and then see if you see your backup file

[cariboo]

tgalati4, I was using AbiWord. I think you described what I did. I did have a "moment of truth" in passing, telling me to get the new stuff on the original instead of using the one called backup. Fortunately, I had finished the project (well, it was relatively big, for me, at 20 pages). I had finished it and run a copy, but had wanted to send it to my co-worker and now must do a lot of retyping and re-grouping of info.

However, WRDN, as I tried your procedure, I discovered that I could not do it correctly enough to even find something that I knew where it was..wondering, if I show you what I typed in, can you tell me what I was doing wrong for that procedure to work in the future. I typed:
find/ -chris June 29th. 2009.abiw(then I pressed enter)

Thanks

You have to enclose your search string with qoutes eg:

find/ "-chris June 29th. 2009.abiw"

As Linux does not deal well with spaces in file names. It thinks you are looking for seperate files: -chris, June, 29th.,2009.abiw.

[tgalati4]

As a rule, use underscores in your filenames: Sermon_Devil_with_a_blue_dress_on_1_Jul_09.abw

Abiword does autosave every 5 minutes by default. This can be set in Edit-->Preferences. The default backup filename is *.bak~.