Scenario: You have a document online, but the online source has vanished, whether by server crash or perhaps having a hacked website. If you’ve recently visited your site on your machine with your browser, you may have a copy of your images and pages still inside your computer, in an often-hidden folder called your browser cache.

Here’s how to find the cache folder: (For any computer running Windows XP)

For Internet Explorer:

C:\Documents and Settings\YOURLOGONNAME\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files

replace YOURLOGONNAME with, well, your very own logon name, whether it be PeBbleS or Betty, or WILMA.

Almost every win-xp running computer will have this path to Internet Explorer’s cache.

For Firefox:

Firefox is a wee bit more complicated because the filenames have no extension. But here goes:
C:\Documents and Settings\YOURLOGONAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

Inside this folder, there may be one or two (or more) profile folders. Click on anything that looks good to you, and then click again on the cache folder inside.

The files marked _CACHE_001_ and so on probably won’t be helpful.

But the rest of the files, all named in a kind of gobbldeygook, will be. Open a browser window right next to the window showing your files. Drag and drop the gobbledegook files one at a time into the browser window. Examine the contents. Rinse, repeat.

Advanced students can run a bulk rename function on the files, and give them all .jpg extensions, then view the window using thumbnails. This will highlight any images right away, and you can keep them or throw them out, depending on what you’re trying to retrieve. Then another bulk-rename run, and give all remaining files a .txt extension, and you’ll be able to open gobs of files simultaneously in your favourite text editor.
If you can’t see the folders, your system has hidden them from you. In any Explorer window, click Tools –> Folder Options –> View and make sure the button next to “Show hidden files and folders” is checked. While you’re at it, UNcheck “Hide extensions for known types” and “Hide protected operating system files”, just for kicks.

Happy Hunting!

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

Place your desired domain name in the search box and click “Take Me Back!”

The dates that show up are linked to a cache of that domain at that particular time and space. (It’s always humbling to look back upon one’s early coding skills, for instance)

This’ll be very text-only unless the same images are still on the original server, but the archive can still be useful in retreiving something you thought lost!

Some folks have lost some data recently, and would like to get it back. There’s some small hope — Google.com will create a cached version of the various pages it visits, and you can often find your missing web pages here!

Step 1

Go to google.com, and in the search box, type the domain name or complete URL of the site you’d like, preceded by “site:” and click the search button. Like so:

If you’re feeling adventurous, you can add a search term to narrow your results.

Step 2

Google will return a list of all the pages it has spidered from your site. Scroll until you find your little lost page, post, or document, and click the word “cached” — do NOT click the regular link. That “Cached” link will take you to a copy of the text that’s been saved to Google’s machine, and you’ll be able to save that page to your own computer and do with it as you wish.

Step 3

Repeat for every page you’re missing.

NOTE: This won’t work well for private site areas, or for sites that have opted out of the Google spidering process. Your mileage may vary!