hello everyone,
i create schematic and PCB layout by KiCad software. unknowingly, i deleted .pretty file. And i clear the recycle bin also. now, how to get that .pretty file?
abcde.pretty is a directory, not a file.
KiCad does not keep a backup
You have wiped it
What you can do is create a new .pretty directory, open your pcb file and edit the footprints and save them back to the folder
There are tools you can use to attempt to recover deleted files, but these tools have nothing to do with KiCad, and the success rate depends on a lot of factors, such as the operating system you are using, the way the HDD is formatted, and how long you waited before you attempt the recovery.
Such tools work on the assumption that when the file is deleted, only the “directory entry” for the file is deleted, but the data itself is still somewhwere on the HDD.
But as the locations of the data of the files is labeled as “free”, the data can easily be overwritten by any file operation, so the longer you wait, the smaller the chance for success.
I once had a quite reasonable success with such a tool, but it was 30 odd years ago and on a DOS machine with FAT16.
But if the footprints which were in that directory are used in any KiCad project, then exporting them from a still existing PCB is a much better option.
If you are running linux: https://itsfoss.com/recover-deleted-files-linux/
for win: https://sourceforge.net/projects/kickassundelete/
Did the pretty folder that was deleted contain your custom footprints or the footprints that were installed with Kicad.
If the latter all you have to do is reinstall Kicad.
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