overwritten files - will they contain the new one?

[joko]

please see my last post about a hard drive problem for back story.

i have managed to get Recuva to search the drive and theres lots there to recover
however, some of the files are marked as 'unrecoverable' - because they have been overwritten with another folder of something else -

so my question is

if i recover them anyway, will i get a copy of whatever overwrote the old file?

i realise it mean the orginal is gone - but will the new one work?

some of the unrecoverable folders, i dont want to save - but if they now contain a new folder with something i do - can i recover that?

if a folder marked. 'john.jpg' says its been overwritten with 'letter.doc' - will i get a letter or a corrupted picture?

thanks

[rojash]

One file is never going to perfectly overwrite another, because files are made up of a number of blocks, and unless the system has just been defragged, or it's a brand new system, those blocks will not be contiguous. Therefore, the only way to find out what you'll get if you attempt recovery, is to do the recovery and have a look at the result. Generally speaking, if a recovery program decides that it may not be able to recover a file, it's right, so the chance are you'll get neithet the letter of the jpg, but just a load of junk.

[joko]

thanks rojash, i have saved them all anyway just to be sure... just waiting for it to finish to test whats there... will post back with results later