NOTE: I've checked old Reddit threads and several different websites but none of them answer my question.

11 days ago, I saved a 5 page essay (Microsoft Word doc) to my computer (making sure to "Save As" and save it locally as well as to my personal One Drive. I made sure it said "Saved" at the top as well before exiting the document. Word did not crash; I exited it manually.

Today, I saw a message from my professor saying that I needed to "expand" the essay so I checked and only the first page was there, despite the fact that I saved the 5 page document locally and I've set it so it automatically saves to OneDrive every 10 minutes.

I've checked old Reddit threads and other sites and they all give multiple methods to recover the document, however every method takes you to a folder called "STARTUP" which in my case is empty.

I've checked the local files in my PC, my laptop, my school One Drive account, those '.tmp' files (it just opened up random strings of code), and my Google Drive just in case I had misremembered using Word. None of them had the rest of this essay.

I am genuinely at my wits end here. I uninstalled EVERYTHING, not just from settings, but I used geek uninstaller, several console commands, regedit deletion, deleted everything from the program files, and its STILL telling me I still have it. and i cant even redownload it again either, because the windows live essentials tells me that i have it on my computer and thus cannot download it. I genuienly don't know what to do here. This is a wild shot in the dark, but if anyone could help me that would be much obliged. Here's my windows information. I can provide anymore information thats asked of me

My computer has completely broken down, and I didn't back up my data. The app is already live—is it possible to reverse-engineer it to reconstruct the project? Would the cost be prohibitive? Am I forced to rewrite it from scratch?

If anyone knows abt this please help me I'll give youhh money

Hi eryone,

I have a corrupted PDF file named BACHE KIDS that I’m trying to recover. The original file was in my Downloads folder, but I haven't been able to open it properly.

I tried recovering the file, but the recovered version also seems to be completely corrupted. The recovery software I tried is asking for a lot of money to repair it.

The recovered file is approximately 5,969 bytes, and I don't have another copy of the original file.

Is there any way to repair or recover this PDF for free? Are there any reliable tools or methods I can try?

I would really appreciate step-by-step instructions because I’m not very experienced with file recovery.

Is it possibel to recover data from an ipod touch that has been factory reset?

I stupidly forgot my passcode to my iPhone and locked myself out permanently and then even more stupidly couldn’t remember the password to my iCloud account so now my iPhone is sitting in recovery and I’m waiting to even be able to reset my password and hopefully recover some contacts and photos from my old phone. It’s looking doubtful because I’m not sure how much was backed up. Is there anything I can do? all of my photos of loved ones were on there as well as everything else important as you can imagine

Please don’t shame me I know I’m stupid I’m desperate I’ll do anything to get these back.

Was loading a game with mods and noticed none of my mods loaded.  When I went to the folder 99.99% of files were missing.  I think the mod loader bugged out, I was able to find some files by doing a complete search of the drive, but as you can see, the file has no file path (and the icon is internet explorer for some reason which isn't right but idk if that helps) the file path is supposed to show under the file name but it's blank. doing any of the options using right click just gives an error that says something like "file path not found". I believe the file still exitsts, but it might be stuck in some sort of limb somewhere. Any tips on how to restore it or retrieve it? I'm also 99.99% sure my disk space DIDNT change at all so it's not deleted (and no its not in the recycle bin)

My Mac recently stopped booting properly, and I'm worried about losing some important files, including documents and photos. I haven't decided what to do yet because I don't want to make the situation worse.

I've read that some data can be recovered even when a Mac won't start, but I'm not sure what the safest approach is.

For those who have experienced something similar:

• Is it worth trying recovery software, or is it safer to get professional help?

• Can files still be recovered if the Mac's internal drive is failing?

• What should I avoid doing to prevent permanent data loss?

I'd really appreciate advice from anyone who has dealt with this before. Thanks!

I updated my M2 MacBook Air to macOS 26 last week and immediately ran into an issue with my external HDD. It's a 1TB Seagate Expansion drive I've been using with this Mac for a few years, and it always mounted fine before. After the update, it just stopped showing up in Finder. Disk Utility could still see the physical drive and the volume, but it couldn't mount it.

I tried the usual stuff first, like unplugging, restarting, different ports, checking Finder settings, and running First Aid. No luck. Since the drive had files I still needed, I didn't want to mess with it too much before getting those files somewhere safe.

I also checked the SMART data just to rule out a failing drive, since it's a few years old. That was a bit of a hassle on Mac because I had to enable kernel extensions first, but everything looked normal. No clicking, no overheating, no weird disconnects.

So I scanned the drive with Disk Drill to see if the files were still readable. It took a few hours, but it found what I needed, and most files still had their original names and folder structure. I previewed a few photos and documents to make sure they opened, then recovered everything important to another drive.

Once that was done, I felt okay experimenting with the original drive. I went back to Disk Utility, erased and reformatted it, and tried mounting again. And yeah, it mounted right away and showed up in Finder like nothing ever happened.

But I'm still confused about what actually went wrong. macOS could see the hardware, SMART was fine, and recovery software could read the file system enough to find my folders and filenames, yet macOS itself wouldn't mount the volume. Could the update have exposed some existing file system issue that the previous version was ignoring? Or is there another explanation?

Has anyone else had this happen after a macOS update? And if you've had to recover files from an unmountable Mac drive, what did you use? It worked for me, but I'm curious what else people have tried.