Originally posted by pala62:
... In the middle of reinstalling Opera just prior to deleting the previous one I had realized I didn't save or back up my notes and then quickly installed and ran Recuva. I wasn't able to find any notes.adr at all so I'm wondering if they are saved under a different name? I heard there are third parties programs to transfer them but I personally had never used them.
the files path is c:/program files/opera
The thing is Opera program file still contains bookmark.adr files but they simply aren't appearing even though I keep reinstalling a few different 12 versions.
What is supposed to happen with older-version series of Opera (12.xx or lower) is that the installation of a newer version within that series should not overwrite the personal user files left behind or still being used by an earlier version, whether the newer version is installed alongside of, or instead of, the earlier version. If the newer version goes in over top of the earlier one, it is supposed to auto-incorporate the earlier version's user files into its own usage. If the newer version is installed along side (into a different-named folder from) the earlier version, it will set up its own new, unpopulated, default-grade user files without disturbing the older version's files. As with any software, bad things can happen to good intentions, and any kind of malfunction/undesired-overwrite is always a possibility - however remote that might be.
Ordinarily, if the older Opera files are "supposed" to still be there, they usually are... but sometimes a user can't find them for various reasons. One more-common possibility is that the user hasn't set Windows Explorer to display "hidden" folders and files, so they simply don't show up, even if present (Opera makes use of a Windows hidden folder for its personal data file storage) and even if using Windows' "search" function. In that case, setting Explorer to show hidden files makes visible that which was formerly invisible: Open Explorer > Tools > Folder Options > View > locate "Files and Folders" and select "Show hidden files, folders, and drives" > OK... then look for the file name(s) again, usually in the \User\**username**\AppData\Roaming\Opera\opera folder. Of course the final subfolder names may vary if Opera was installed somewhere other than the installation's default-suggested *\opera folder.
Another possibility is if the user has employed a 3rd-party uninstall program to "clean up" or perform a "more thorough" Opera uninstall than Windows typically does. Some of these programs will locate the left-behind Opera user files and wipe them out - in which case, they really are 'gone'. In such a case, "unerasing" the file (if done before much new file writing occurs) may allow recovery. Restoration from a backup or image file-set are an even better way to get them back.
A final possibility is that the earlier Opera installation files had somehow become corrupted so that Opera was either malfunctioning (which is perhaps why the user wanted to uninstall it) or Opera itself couldn't locate the corrupted files and created entirely new, default-grade versions by copying the template files from its installation folder. Corrupted files are more problematic to deal with, certainly if they've been replaced or over-written by Opera, but even otherwise since usually only a lot of manual repair work will restore them to usability or to extract their contents. Because the user files are generally written in plain-text (with some formatted headers, etc), a user can indeed look inside them to read what's there and perhaps copy some of it if the corruption isn't too bad.
As I noted in the post right above yours, if the files being retrieved are from a "\Programs" or "\Program files" folder, that is the main installation folder for Opera, on which case you are probably dealing with the default-level template files from Opera's \default sub-folder, not the actual user files. Such template file versions won't contain any user data that you've put in. User data, in modern windows versions, is not allowed to be written into the system's "\program files" folder, but instead gets mainly written into a subfolder of the user's account roaming folder (which is normally a hidden folder, unless you've set hidden folders to be shown).
I'm not familiar with how Recuva actually works to gauge its effectiveness in file recovery, but ordinarily the more files that are subsequently written-back to a drive after a file deletion, the less likely the chances of finding or recovering intact the deleted file(s). When files are deleted in Windows, only the first data bit of the file is flipped, indicating the file-space is now available for write usage by another file; but until the space is rewritten over, the original file's data remains intact there. This is what enables file recovery... the recovery tool typically ignores the first bit and reads out whatever is in the space, and if it looks structurally OK, allows the user to force the first data-bit back to normal and the file is "recovered". Unfortunately, if any of the original file's space has been reused, the result (if recovery is even allowed) will be a corrupted file with some alien bits scattered within it. The normal "best policy" when something occurs that may involve a possibly-deleted file is to keep system file-writes to an utter minimum while pursuing a solution path that might involve "undeleting" files - this reduces the chances that a new file will be written over top of the disk space formerly occupied by the deleted file. Your attempts at re-installing Opera and performing 'system restores' have all caused file-write operations that offer a fair probability of having overwritten any space used by now-deleted Opera files, thus rendering them unrecoverable.
As I noted earlier, before doing a lot of digital gymnastics trying to get Opera to read the bookmarks.adr file you were able to locate in the "\program files" folder, first look inside that file with Notepad to see if it's even the user bookmarks file you want, instead of the default template file it may likely be. The version you want will have a number of bookmark entries in plain text that you should recognize as ones you stored; the template one will be mostly (if not completely) empty of bookmarks, and will certainly be devoid of anything you would have added earlier.
