“Can I recover lost internet files?”

(Answer requested by Rodrigo Melgar)

Rodrigo’s full question:

“How can I recover lost internet files? I want to recover Steam reviews I deleted a while ago (I only managed to retrieve a couple using Wayback Machine). Bear in mind it’s only raw text, which used to be under the link shown as an attachment.”

If the original text has been deleted from the Steam servers, and you don’t have a copy, then then only likely places where the text might still exist is in Steam’s own backups, or in someone else’s archival copy of the Steam site.

Have you asked Steam? I bet they won’t help, but why not ask? A polite message or email to their support staff will only take you a minute or two, and can’t hurt.

If/when they say no, your only remaining recourse is the copy of Steam previously crawled and stored by a publicly-accessible indexing/search service. You’ve already tried the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (great idea, btw!), so about all that’s left are long-shots like Google and Bing: If the page you’re looking for hasn’t been superseded, and isn’t from too long ago, you might be able to still find it with a search: Try searching for very specific keywords or phrases that you remember from your old reviews, and see if Google (or another search engine) can find them for you.

I’m not holding out a lot of hope. Your text is probably gone for good.

(And now you know why I’m a fanatic about backups.)

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