Get Back All Those Precious Files

How to Recover Deleted Files

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When you mistakenly delete a file on your computer and empty the recycle bin, all is not lost. There are actually several programs available that can recover your deleted files. This can be done quite easily, and it is much simpler than you may think. If you aren’t comfortable doing this yourself, you can also hire a private source or company to do it for you. However, going this route is much more expensive, and you may end up spending more than $1,000 with no guarantee of recovery. Sometimes the type of data lost may be worth the cost. Here is some information to help you make the decision that’s right for you.

What happens to a file when I have deleted it?

Your computer doesn’t permanently delete these files; it basically tells your computer to make it invisible and that the space on your storage device where that file resides is now once again available for new data to be written on, if need be.

What do I do now?

1. STOP USING THE COMPUTER IMMEDIATELY. Do not try to find the recovery program on the computer you just deleted your files on. Depending on how full your hard drive is, it makes it much more risky for any free space made by deleted files to be used up much sooner. Even turning the computer on and off can create files. Defragging once you have deleted your files can potentially remove the ones you’d like to recover, or seriously harm your chances of recovery. During the process of defragging, your current files move over to the free space your deleted files have created, in order to reduce fragmentation. In this case the recovery program’s success will be very limited, if effective at all, as there won‘t be much to work with. The sooner you can start to recover your files the better. The chance of the space being used by other files goes up the longer you wait.

2. Go to another computer and download or purchase a recovery program to run on the computer in question. Click the following link for a list of recommended file recovery programs.

Prevention/Preparedness

Prevention of initial loss of data can be priceless. Backing up your files to an external hard drive, zip drive or disc is always a great idea. Also, partitioning your files may help you as well. Partitioning is the act of separating your hard drive into different sections than are separate from one another. You can even put different operating systems into different partitions so that your C: drive isn’t indiscriminately using up space for system functions. This is useful because you can create one partition on your hard drive for backups, and negate the need to use a deleted file recovery program since you'll have an extra copy of those files.

If none of the file recovery software works in retrieving your deleted files, you can always try a third party intervention as mentioned above. Just keep in mind that time is of the essence in these situations, so don't waste any time!