Recover Word documents from computer lab PC when source (USB) drive no longer exists?

I lost my 60 GB USB drive quite recently back in my school's computer lab.

Unfortunately, by the time I got there when I realized my USB was missing, it was already gone. So, its currently missing.

I have a few important Word documents in there, that were only saved in the USB. There is no auto-recovery or backup, unfortunately.

What I'd like to know is if it is possible if I could recover any of them.

Although, they are listed in the "Recent Documents" of word. I'd just like to know if there is ANY way I could recover them. Like, using a program to recover them.

I am using Microsoft Word 2010.

No. The Recent Documents icon is just a link. To recover the documents you really do need to have the USB drive.

Note that it's likely a teacher found the USB drive and is keeping it safe until someone reports they lost it. I'd ask around with teachers if they found your USB drive.

Is it possible if I could recover any of them?

The Word "Recent Documents" is just a list of filenames (and their locations) of documents you have recently edited. It does not contain any of the documents' data.

If you still have access to the machine where you last edited the documents, then it may be possible to recover them.

However, it is very unlikely you will succeed, as every write access to that disk will potentially overwrite data needed for successful recovery.

• Word keeps AutoRecover files and backup files under some circumstances.

• See How to recover a lost Word document for the locations of these files.

• These files are normally deleted when a document is saved and Word exits normally (may be left around if Word crashes or is killed with a document open).

• You may be able to find these deleted files on PCs where you last edited the documents using recovery software such as Recuva.

  • See How do I recover lost/inaccessible data from my storage device? for more ideas.

  • Every time you write to the disk where the AutoRecover files and backup files are located reduces the chance of any successful recovery.

It doesn't work all the time but it worked out for me a couple of times.

Go and search for your files in C:\Users\"Your User"\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Office\"Word, Excel, etc."\

Here you can find some of your files autosaved by Office.

Look there, it is worth a shot.