Strange discovery with recovered files software.

[Deserted]

Hi all, I recently lost some files, about 20gig actually. I don't know how it happened but I did have many folders with the same name and I think they merged and were overwritten. I have not yet solved this problem. I have used a few recovery software tools and yesterday made a strange discovery which is a bit of a mystery. I noticed that in two recvoered files folders there were many avi files about 66 gigg and in another chk files. When I looked into them they contained videos of things I have watched over the last few months on line, mostly streaming videos from facebook and so on. I am quite confused about this. Why is my computer saving the content of things I watch online. It was mostly facebook stuff and news stuff, sometimes there were audio files of radio content too. Given that the total content of both fiels was nearly 100 Gigg, I would like to avoid this. I didn't download anything, just watched on line but it seems as though the content has been copied. Should this be happening?

I am rather confused and wonder how it is happening. Is mutlimedia content cached somehow before being deleted?

[Somtamnication]

It depends. Browsers download videos while watching. Ever clear your browser's cache?

FB works in mysterious ways. No idea what they are doing, that is why I never use them.

Google Earth does the same. Unless you clear their cache, you will have about a gig after about 2 hours online with them.

[danbradster]

Since it's a recovery software, it sounds like they were cached and temporarily saved on your hard drive then deleted. The recovery software wonders if you want to undelete them. It's not wasting your hard drive space. It's just like any other file you deleted.

[Deserted]

Since it's a recovery software, it sounds like they were cached and temporarily saved on your hard drive then deleted. The recovery software wonders if you want to undelete them. It's not wasting your hard drive space. It's just like any other file you deleted.

Yes, that seems to be about right but why are they stored on your system in the first place. I didn't know that when you watch something the whole video would go into a temporary folder. Why does windows need to do that?

[Loptr]

If you are on Windows, it saves everything you browse on the internet in temporary cache in case you want to access it again at a later date... That way it is cached and you don't have to download it a second time... You can delete your browser history / cache manually and / or set it to delete every time you exit the browser... You may want to read up on clearing temp files, browser cache and history settings for whatever browser you are using...

[Pib]

Since it's a recovery software, it sounds like they were cached and temporarily saved on your hard drive then deleted. The recovery software wonders if you want to undelete them. It's not wasting your hard drive space. It's just like any other file you deleted.

Yes, that seems to be about right but why are they stored on your system in the first place. I didn't know that when you watch something the whole video would go into a temporary folder. Why does windows need to do that?

Improves the reliability of the streaming video...allows the video to be buffered instead...otherwise there would probably be a tremendous amount of pausing going on. Also, when you want to pause and maybe backup a few minutes in the video the data is already on your hard drive versus having to be download again using up bandwidth. Just a more efficient and reliable way. Many temporary files are created when using your operating system and browsing....most are deleted...some you need to periodically delete/clean-out. And by "deleted" I don't mean they are overwritten by new data because when file is initially deleted it's name/location on the drive is simply removed...the file is really still there until it eventually gets overwritten by new data.

There is little privacy when someone like a law enforcement agency or just a hacker wants to review a person's computer hard drives, smartphone memory, etc., as the technology exists to recover files you thought were long gone...and a lot of this technology is using Windows commands or simple freeware or software you buy. And technology exists which can still read files that have only been overwritten once or twice or more. That why some security software used to erase drives actually overwrite the whole drive "multiple" times to truly nuke the old data.

Edited May 1, 2015 by Pib

[DogNo1]

Try using the free CCleaner to delete cached video, log files, etc. It will do it all for you. Incidentally, in some of those CHK files, you may discover your missing videos of your daughter. Good luck.

[bendejo]

Some of the things that run inside the browser, like FlashPlayer, keep their own cache/buffer files in their own directories, away from the browser's cache. Unless you get into the settings of it, it will probably by default have a folder somewhere on C: and likely to be inside a folder called "temp" or "tmp"

You may have to do some sleuthing around to find these destinations, and, broadly speaking, it is usually safe to delete the contents of these temporary directories -- I do, but proceed at your own risk. Search from C:\ and you'll find a bunch.

CCleaner is great for cleaning up the junk files, but out-of-box (or zip file ) it will just clean up the default locations. If you have other crud you want removed you can easily add those directories or files, go to options->include.

Looking through my include list I see an entry for C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Flash Player\AssetCache

I added that a while back, I'm pretty sure it's the FlashPlayer stuff I mentioned in the first sentence; there was some chatter questioning the security of the stuff in this dir. Also plenty of other programs (like GoggleEarth, mentioned above) keep a store of temporary files.

[RichCor]

[...]

...but why are they stored on your system in the first place.

I didn't know that when you watch something the whole video would go into a temporary folder. Why does windows need to do that?

PIB mostly answered this question.

Whether or not Storage-Memory (hard disk) is used is determined by the type of app used and its buffering requirements for the feature set of the app.

A live-feed app that only renders live data could rely on just a RAM-based buffer. But if you ever wanted to Pause/Resume the live-feed then an expandable buffer needs to be created somewhere an reserved RAM for the app may not be adequate.

For other "non-live only" content, once a stream is established it's best not to pause it so buffers are created on available storage-devices/drives that would allow you to pause/resume the playback. It's necessary for the feature to work.