Just in case this is not common knowledge: In a computer, deleted files aren't physically erased, only their address in the HD is deleted. If you ever delete a file and don't know how to recover it, the first thing you must do is not using that drive anymore. As long as you don't use the drive you can be sure the file will never be deleted. Once you've made sure you don't overwrite the file by mistake (the way of really losing the file forever) find a file recovery app on the web. There are hundreds of free ones. Remember that if you install the file recovery app in the same drive you're trying to recover your file from, you might be overwriting it. Alternatively, just ask in a forum, you'll have a good chance of finding someone who'll tell you what to do. Everything's ok as long as you don't touch the drive.
And text files are more likely to survive half-chewed than any other type. At least, that's how it seems.
That's mostly because of the type of apps used to recover them. An app specifically designed to recover photography will recover even pieces of pictures. The advantage of documents is that they're so small that if you recover a part, you'll most probably recover it all. However, the eternal question is why writers don't mount an automatic versioning system in their computer that would make it little less than physically impossible to ever lose more than about five minutes of work. Taking into account that writers create a lot of value in minuscule space (from a computation point of view).
Or use DropBox, which backups the current and the ten previous versions to the Internet. You get 2 GB storage for free.
I know it might fall a bit on the tinfoil hat side, but I wouldn't store on the web something I plan to publish later on.
Microsoft Word automatically saves every few minutes for me so that I always several versions I can choose from if I'm quick up, also I back up on a flash drive and my antivirus automatically backs up the files that I ask it to their secure online storage 5 times a week. I am okay with them doing this, while I wouldn't want it somewhere else.
Microsoft withdrew versioning in Word 2007. It still has autosave and recovery, but they're a different matter and nowhere near as reliable.
I have 2010 and it seems to work fine for me, whatever it is. I actually don't know whnt versioning is, to be honest, I just know what mine does...lol
Word 2010 also allows you, for free, to store your files online in your "Sky Drive." Since this is a solution offered by a company that always has to worry about IP security, especially for large companies, the risk of having your work get out from there is much less than it is from your own computer. If you're not going so far as using full-disk encryption locked to your hardware and strong passwords on your user accounts, you shouldn't be worried about storing your files online with a reputable company. It's also a great idea to set up system recovery checkpoints (if on Windows, or the equivalent on other Operating Systems) and incremental backups. Edit: Missed what I was originally going to say. Not wanting to use a drive that you're trying to recover data from is an excellent reason to always keep your important documents and files on a separate physical drive, or at least in a separate partition. This will greatly increase the odds of you getting some or all of your data back if something goes wrong. The only sure way, though, is offsite backups.
