How to recover lost or deleted files

You suddenly need some file/document from your PC. You open the place where you had saved it to find out that it is no longer there. Now you would start to worry a bit. You will look into the recycle bin. You still don't find it.Then you look at the folders that you frequently open and still you do not see it anywhere. Now you are beginning to panic. Then, you would probably search the whole computer and still find out that the file does not exist. Perhaps, it's deleted by mistake when you don't know. But don't worry today i am just going to show you how you can recover these lost or deleted files.

How does the file recovery process work?

When there is a file on your computer, it occupies a certain amount of space on your hard disk. When this file gets deleted, all what your OS does is that it marks this area of the space on the hard disk as empty. i.e the file still exists on the "physical disk" but the OS has marked that space as empty. When this is done, the OS is ready to write new files on that part of the disk (i.e overwrite). When we are recovering the deleted files, we usually use softwares which scan this areas on the disk looking for the missing files. Once they find the files, they can give you an option on which files you want to recover. Once a file is deleted, and you still keep on adding new files to the disk without first recovering it, you are reducing the chances to recover the deleted file.

Which softwares can you use to recover deleted files?

Once you find out that you can not see the file you are looking for anywhere on your computer, you can attempt to use a file recovery software. At this point, I suggest you to use a free file recovery program to recover the file, as you probably don't want to waste money in buying a software that you will use only once and dump it.

One of the best free data recovery softwares are:

1. Recuva (Windows) - This is a very user friendly software. To recover files you can use the wizard mode or the manual file recovery. The wizard is easier to use and lets you narrow your search type to pictures, music, documents, video, or all files, and you can set the search location to everywhere on your computer, removable media only, in My Documents, the Recycle Bin, or a specified location.
2. TestDisk (Windows/Mac/Linux) - TestDisk is a open source software. TestDisk not only allows you to recover deleted files, but also has many more functions to recover boot sectors, recover partitions such as Fat, Fat32, NTFS and ext2, Fix FAT tables and so on.
3. Restoration (Windows) - The good thing with this software is that you can use it with all versions of windows and windows file systems. This software lacks ability to sort files according to file name and file type to narrow down your results. But still this software is very portable and tiny to move around with.

You can use the above free softwares to recover your deleted files.

If you face any problems or would like to know about something, you can contact me or just comment below.

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