How to Recover Deleted Files from Your Computer

The basic purpose of computer is to process data but over the years evolution of technology and new challenges have led to new ways of storing, removing, manipulating and optimizing data. While managing data and storage sometimes accidental deletion of files do occur. This is a major hindrance to work whether it interrupts technologists, office staff or home users work at computer.

One of the important things a computer user must do is to create a backup of important files. Backup avoids data loss in case there is accidental deletion of files. System restore utility in operating systems like Windows recovers system files to some extent. But if even this recovery system fails then it is better to use some software tools to recover deleted files.

But, follow below mentioned steps first before going for the process of recovering lost files:

1. First check your computer's recycle bin for your missing files before going for data restoration using software tools.

2. Next step is to stop working on the partition from where the file deletion happened, It may not be possible to recover the deleted file if any operation is performed on the drive after the file has been removed because if new file overwrites the deleted file then every trace of old data will get erased.

Now use any of the below mentioned software tools:

1. Restoration - It recovers data from flash drives and SD cards without search criteria.

It is a freeware utility, which helps a user to recover deleted files. The advantage of using this utility is that it is light on the computer system and supports the FAT and NTFS file systems. It is also useful to get data back from flash drives and SD cards as well. This application's drawback is that it does not allow the user to set filters or search criteria. In addition, one cannot scan two or more drives at a time and also the search results are not segregated according to the file types.

2. Undeleted Plus - It recovers data from flash drives with search criteria.

This is also a freeware utility, which helps a user to recover deleted files. It is a bit simpler than the first tool to use and supports all windows file systems like FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, and NTFS5. Added advantage of this software tools is that one can set search criteria and add filter. It is useful to recover data from flash drives.

3. Handy Recovery - Recovers data with deferred recovery feature and search criteria.

This is another file recovery utility. It comes with a simple wizard. It supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, and HFS. It also allows users to create an image of a partition for deferred recovery as well as set filters for better search results.

All the three software utility tools to recover deleted files can be downloaded free from utility tool developer's web site.

Similar to backing up files and folders, backing up system's settings and drivers is also important. However, system restore utility of Windows is the best tool to backup Windows settings and drivers.

List of abbreviations used in this article:

FAT - File Allocation Table

FAT12 - 12-Bit File Allocation Table

FAT16 - 16-Bit File Allocation Table

FAT32 - 32-Bit File Allocation Table

NTFS - New Technology File System

NTFS - New Technology File System version 5

HFS - Hierarchical File System

SD Card - Secure Digital Memory Card