Tip #6: Recovering Deleted Files
Today's tip is on recovering deleted files from your hard drive... Accidentally deleting files is something we all try to avoid, but it can happen on occasion... Emptying the recycle bin before checking its contents, performing a Shift+Delete on a file or folder, or deleting a file from the command line can all render your data invisible to XP, and seemingly lost forever... This can be quite upsetting if the data in question was something you've spent a lot of time working on... Fortunately, your chances for recovery of deleted data are actually quite good, especially if you take immediate action...
Windows XP does not ship with any application for assisting you in recovering your data, so I would recommend using a free application called Restoration (mirror)... This program is very effective at recovering deleted files from your hard drive... The application does not require installation either, so it is a handy application to carry on a USB flash drive as well...
Below is an example of recovering files using Restoration:
Simply select the drive you'd like to restore from in the pulldown menu at the upper right, then click on the "Search Deleted Files" button... After the search is complete, select the files you'd like to restore and click on the "Restore By Copying" button...
It is important that you try to restore your files either to another drive or partition, so as to avoid overwriting information on your source drive... So if you only have one drive/partition, try to restore the data to diskette, USB flash drive, or a network drive...
Hopefully you'll never need to put today's tip to use, but if you ever need to undelete files, now you'll be prepared...
Windows XP does not ship with any application for assisting you in recovering your data, so I would recommend using a free application called Restoration (mirror)... This program is very effective at recovering deleted files from your hard drive... The application does not require installation either, so it is a handy application to carry on a USB flash drive as well...
Below is an example of recovering files using Restoration:
Simply select the drive you'd like to restore from in the pulldown menu at the upper right, then click on the "Search Deleted Files" button... After the search is complete, select the files you'd like to restore and click on the "Restore By Copying" button...
It is important that you try to restore your files either to another drive or partition, so as to avoid overwriting information on your source drive... So if you only have one drive/partition, try to restore the data to diskette, USB flash drive, or a network drive...
Hopefully you'll never need to put today's tip to use, but if you ever need to undelete files, now you'll be prepared...
posted by Jameser @ 11:43 AM
22 Comments:
At 7/03/2006 11:58 PM,
TheCurt said…
I wish I knew of this 6 months ago. Could've saved me a lot of trouble.
At 7/04/2006 12:01 AM,
Lysol said…
I use that program and it's excellent. It really comes in handy, and I keep it with all my little programs on my 512 mb key. It's amazingly small, yet so powerful. Good job referring everyone to it.
At 7/04/2006 12:16 AM,
Anonymous said…
It doesn't work as well on NTFS as it does on FAT.
At 7/04/2006 12:56 AM,
Manikantan said…
Angel, thats what you are. And I have cut my arm twice after doing this kind of a delete and looking around for something that can save me. Though was not useful for me this time (Disk was defragmented you see), Am sure this will aid in future.
At 7/04/2006 3:29 AM,
egeniuses said…
I have problems restoring from ntfs drives with restore.
Freeundelete works better for me. Here it is:
http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/
At 7/04/2006 4:26 AM,
web design uk said…
Great! I've always wondered
At 7/04/2006 4:44 AM,
increseo said…
I use PC Inspector ( http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm ). Work without a hitch. And it's free too.
At 7/04/2006 5:08 AM,
Anonymous said…
nice one cheers :d
At 7/04/2006 5:30 AM,
egeniuses said…
I just tried the new version of Restore and it works with ntfs. I spoke too soon. You can still check out FreeUndelete.
At 7/04/2006 6:54 AM,
bb said…
ill give it a try :)\
At 7/04/2006 12:50 PM,
Simon said…
Good stuff. Much obliged!
At 7/04/2006 5:23 PM,
Anonymous said…
I can use one of my forensic tools, works on all OS.... works a bit better then most.
At 7/07/2006 4:33 AM,
Anonymous said…
"I can use one of my forensic tools, works on all OS.... works a bit better then most."
Nice to brag, but would be nice if you could share the name of that forensic tool you use so others can do the same...
Im guessing your talking about a bootable linux disc???
At 7/08/2006 10:22 PM,
mrtech said…
Smart Data Recovery is free and is somewhat like freeundelete and seems to work just as well.
http://www.smartpctools.com/data_recovery/
At 8/05/2006 3:51 AM,
Anonymous said…
The link to Restoration does not work. The page is in Japanese and the software is also not there!!
At 8/05/2006 9:36 AM,
Jameser said…
I've added a link to a mirror... I'm not certain what happened to the original page, or if it is just a temporary error... mirror
James...
At 11/08/2007 3:21 PM,
Blu3duk said…
Thanks for the info.... this morning my wife decided to shidt-delete a .wpd smal file i was working on cause she did not like it.... so ive been all day trying to recover the information, at least ifound the dis connected information on the disk itself, but thus far i aint got it back yet..... lots of proggy's out there but nothing touches it yet... at least in their trial versions....
blu3duk
At 4/11/2008 6:21 PM,
Anonymous said…
Awesome! It's a really handy application. I used it to recover a cut JPG file from my SD card. Much better than other commercial crapwares. - John
At 11/24/2008 9:48 AM,
scyther428 said…
Thx sooooo much ... accidentally deleted all my games due to the uninstallation of just 1 game, now waiting for it to recover over 10GB of my games lol Thanks again for the info!
At 12/14/2008 8:37 PM,
Anonymous said…
I am so happy right now! My kids just deleted the pics off my sd card and I now have all the pics back that I have taken for the last month!
At 1/20/2009 12:02 AM,
ANURAG said…
excellent product fantastic one i recovered my all very-2 important files .3 cheeres for this tools...
At 5/29/2009 8:20 PM,
Michiel said…
i CUT a folder on my sd card with pictures in it, went to paste it on my computer but the option was not there and when i returned to my sd card I found that my folder was not there anymore either..i tried this program but turned up zero results.
Does this program work for this kind of situation? Is there any other program that might work?
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