Is there a way to recover deleted downloads?

[hectorrajado]

Your question

Through the firefox extension I decided to delete all the finished downloads to keep things clean. I thought that this would just delete the confirmation from the list, but it turns out that it actually deletes the actual files from the downloads folder. I am horrified at this, as I don't even remember what I deleted or where to find it again. Is there any way to recover these deleted files? Or are they permanently gone? I thought that maybe they would have gone to the recycle bin in my computer, but I didn't find them there. Does deleting the files in this way through the extension, put them in some other type of bin, or is there no way to recover these lost files? Thanks in advance.

Addon & CoApp version and details

version: 9.5.0.2
target: mozilla
channel: stable
lang: en-GB
coapp: {"found":true,"path":"C:\Program Files\DownloadHelper CoApp\vdhcoapp.exe","version":"2.0.19","new_version":false}
license: {"accepted":true,"email":"","key":"11e85650d7904d1c"}
platform: x86-64 win
UA: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:140.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/140.0
{
"valid_license_message_has_been_displayed": true,
"privacy_accept": true,
"used_history_button": true,
"view_options": {
"all_tabs": false,
"low_quality": false,
"sort_by_status": true,
"sort_reverse": false,
"show_button_clean": true,
"show_button_clean_all": false,
"show_button_convert_local": false,
"hide_downloaded": false
},
"open_count_store": 219,
"successfull_dl": 16,
"never_show_successfull_dl_message": true,
"record_download_history": true
}

[jcfrog]

Hi,
Sorry I'm afraid they are lost.

[hectorrajado]

That sucks :(
Thanks for the reply

[GrampaWildWilly]

I do not work for VDH. I am just another user. Also, please read #2214.

I see from the environment information you posted that you have enabled VDH history. You might be able to reconstruct what you did by analyzing your VDH history log. That way, you could download the lost files again. You will need to download everything again, unfortunately.

But I am a bit baffled. I thought the buttons for deleting things offered an option to just delete the entries on the VDH menu without deleting the files as well. You need to hover the mouse over the button to let a tooltip hover up. I believe there is a comment there telling you whether the button will delete the files or just the menu entries.

A quick way of clearing all VDH information without touching the files is to Reload addon. That is a function at the very bottom of the VDH settings. You have to open settings, select More settings, then scroll to the bottom to see the relevant button. This only clears the information in the menu. It does not clear the VDH history & it does not access any files you've downloaded.

[jcfrog]

The trash bin deletes the file, the top right little cross delete just the entry in the list.

[GrampaWildWilly]

Oh yeah. I also meant to comment on the Windows Recycle Bin. It's pretty much useless. If you explicitly hit the Delete key on your keyboard to delete something, that gets sent to the Recycle Bin. If a program deletes a file under program control, that is NOT sent to the recycle bin. When I discovered this something like 20 or 30 years ago, I thought that's totally useless. I have been in the habit of disabling the Recycle Bin for decades. I think it does nothing but give people a false sense of security. Sometimes, I wonder where the Microsoft engineers get their ideas from.

[RobertL-CH]

To be fair, I think the engineers often have good ideas which are subsequently watered down or rendered useless by the marketing people. Marketing is the enemy of software quality. I'm pretty sure that the hottest corner of Hell is reserved for marketing people.