How to Recover Deleted Files
Recovering deleted files from your hard drive is not a crazy thing to try to do, but it helps to attempt the recovery as soon as you realize the file has been deleted. Files that are deleted aren’t usually truly deleted until they are overwritten by something else. Follow the steps to maximize your chances of recovering deleted files from your device:
More Help Recovering Deleted Files
These tips may also help recover deleted files. Recuva is a top pick, but if you don’t like it for some reason, or if you try it and it doesn’t find the file you need to recover, by all means, try another. If you downloaded it to a flash drive, extracting it right there onto the flash drive is ideal. If you had no choice but to use your hard drive, extract it there. If you had to use your hard drive and choose an installable version of a file recovery tool, install it as directed. The exact procedure differs from program to program, but it typically involves choosing the drive you want to scan for deleted files and then tapping or clicking a Scan button. Again, the details on recovering files you want to recover are specific to the tool you chose to use.
Two Thoughts
The smartest thing you can do is to stop writing data to the drive that contained the deleted files. The only way the file you want to recover disappears completely is if the same physical space it occupied on the drive is overwritten. So, don’t do anything that might cause that to happen. Most write-heavy tasks are things like installing software, downloading or streaming music or videos, etc. Doing those things won’t necessarily overwrite your file, but the chances go up the more you do them. Before you do anything else, attempt to restore the deleted files from the Recycle Bin. You’ve probably already looked in the Recycle Bin, but if not, do so now. If you’re lucky enough to have not emptied it since you deleted the file, it might be here and in perfect working order.
