I used emClient for years with an external drive for my email storage. I went to uninstall the application and I accidentally clicked ‘Yes’ when it asked me if I wanted to also delete the database. In one shot, my entire email archive with important historical data is GONE. I’m so upset right now. I’m upset at myself for clicking it and also upset that there wasn’t a better notification alert warning me of the danger of proceeding with deleting the database. I had so much backed up work emails and important files to retrieve and now I’m f**ked!
Yeah, you should always read what you are clicking Yes to. By default the popup has No selected, so if you just hit enter by mistake, your data is safe.
The only solution is to restore from your most recent backup.
I keep my email storage located on an external hard drive. If I had disconnected the external drive before accidentally clicking ‘Yes’ my data would have been safe since emClient wouldn’t be able to access it. Unfortunately the drive was still connected when this happened.
The reason I had to uninstall the application was because my laptop was going to be reset. It has since been reformatted and when I went back to install the application and database I saw that it was gone.
When Windows deletes data that large it doesn’t get moved to the Recycle Bin, it just deletes the entire thing. So my question is… do you think my data would still be recoverable from the external drive using professional data recovery tools or services?
As a Pro License user you should open a support ticket with eM Client. They may have some advice on how to proceed. But yes, it may still be recoverable using some data recovery application or service.
I assume that as you did not attempt to restore that you are not making backups. If your data is not synced with an email server, you should absolutely be making regular backups.
There’s stil hope and large possibility of success if you havent’ saved anything to this drive.
Don’t save ANYTHING to this drive. Use a file rescue tool. The BEST one is https://www.cgsecurity.org/
Restore file to a DIFFERENT drive so you don’t override the bits still to be recovered.
Hope this helps.
- Cristiano
I think there is a lesson to be learned here . . . make regular backups!!!
For personal use it is not such a great loss, but for business, there is no question that you should be making a regular backup and storing it on another media. Running your eM Client database off an external drive is NOT the solution unless there is another copy of the database. Better to run the database off your computer hard disk (much improved speed) and save your backups to the external disk. At a minimum, a weekly backup is essential.