How to Restore Deleted Files

Accidentally deleting your precious pictures, photos, and files is bound to happen to anyone of us sooner or later. I hope that you do not encounter this dilemma, however if you do, you may possibly have a chance to recover the files that you have deleted. One way is to get a professional IT guy that specializes in file or data recovery, which in itself can be very expensive. The other way is to buy a program that recovers and restores your deleted files and photos.

Well this is your lucky day because you have actually hit the jackpot by finding this fantastic free program called Recuva. I know I was ecstatic when I found it and actually recovered my photos that I had accidentally deleted from the recycle bin. I seriously thought that it would not work, because after all, it is a free program after all.

"Recuva (pronounced "recover") is a freeware Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!" Quoted from the Recuva website, it just sounded too good to be true.

When can you use Recuva to recover and restore your deleted pictures, photos, and files?

· When you have recently accidentally deleted a file, photo, or picture from your computer

· When you haven't used your computer too much and overwritten the deleted file

· When this program says “No overwritten clusters detected” and that the file is in Excellent state after scanning your drive

When can't you use Recuva to recover and restore your deleted pictures, photos, and files?

· When you have formatted your computer hard drive

· Sometimes if you have defragged your computer

· If the program says the file has overwritten clusters

What are the results from my tests with recvua?

· I have two hard drives and scanned both. One is C drive and one is D drive. C drive is the main hard drive and D is storage. Nearly all the files that showed up were available for recovery.

· D drive had very old files show up. Half the stuff I could hardly remember because I had been storing files on there for a few years.

· C drive had less as I had recently formatted it, but all the recent deleted filed were available.

· Then I decided to defrag C: and then scan it again. This definitely reduced the number of files that were in Excellent condition to recover. It probably overwrote 75% of files by defragging.

· I was amazed at what it actually recovered. It had every little thing that had been stored in my internet history, cookies, and other stuff that you thought would have been gone. It was almost scary how much detail this program went in to. All this from a free program.

What does Windows do with deleted pictures, photos, and files.

Even when you have deleted a file from the recycle bin it is not really gone. Windows simply marks the file as deleted, and waits for the space to be overwritten for it really to be deleted. If you didn't format or defrag the drive the file may possibly be there for years to come. This is what happened with my D drive.

Notes:

· Files that has Excellent state and with the comment No overwritten clusters detected can be recovered.

· You should always recover your file to another drive as you might overwrite the file your are trying to recover.

· You can also recover deleted photos from your camera storage card! How great is that?

This program is totally free and is made be the same guys that made Ccleaner. Their programs don't nag you to upgrade and they have no spyware contained in them. So, enjoy it...

CMIIW... :)