Deleted a recording? Do this first

Who this is for

Anyone who just recorded a call in a browser and found an empty file, or who deleted a file and has not written anything new to that drive yet.

The problem

The browser writes the recording into a hidden temporary file, and only swaps that into the real file when you stop it cleanly. The tab closed first, and the video file was 0 bytes. On this drive, delete crosses a file out of the table of contents. The bytes stay until something new is written over them.

Do this first

• Stop writing to that drive. Do not save, copy, or download anything else onto it.
• Remount it read-only if you can, or eject it, until someone can read it without writing.
• Next time, stop the recording from the tool's own menu and wait until it finishes saving.
• Record to the computer's own disk. Copy the finished file after it has a real size.
• If you have to go looking, fingerprint the files you still have first, so you can skip them.

What it would take for you

Nothing to buy tonight. The first move is to stop writing to the drive. A full read is slow and stays read-only. If you want that done, it is a fixed piece of work, agreed before it starts.