I have another question: Sometimes I'll open up a savegame file for various games in a text editor to see whats inside. Sometimes its text-based but most of the time its a binary-based file so it comes out garbage characters. But sometimes I can see words in the middle of the garbage. Whats this?
Well you can always construct a pathological case which gets bigger when you try and compress it (with any compression method that is lossless). It can happen by accident as well.
Solution: try another compression method or don't compress the file.
I failed to back-up a folder properly before I re-installed Windows about a month ago. I'm only realizing my blunder now. What are my options for data recovery at this point? The files aren't important enough to spend $$ recovering.
Depends on what kind of format you did when you reloaded. Probably not very good though. You might find some kind of undelete program, or a program that will scan the actual sectors of the hard drive instead of looking at a VTOC or somesuch. But the longer it's been the less likely it is to recover. Even with spending money.I failed to back-up a folder properly before I re-installed Windows about a month ago. I'm only realizing my blunder now. What are my options for data recovery at this point? The files aren't important enough to spend $$ recovering.
Heres a question: I want to backup the savegames of a certain game but I have no idea where they're kept. Is there some sort of tool or something that'll bring up the location of a file when its accessed by the game? I don't think I'm explaining this real good.
Depends on what kind of format you did when you reloaded. Probably not very good though. You might find some kind of undelete program, or a program that will scan the actual sectors of the hard drive instead of looking at a VTOC or somesuch. But the longer it's been the less likely it is to recover. Even with spending money.
I would google "location saved game folder (name of game)".