Recover deleted files
When files in Windows are deleted they are moved to the recycling bin.If you accidentally delete a file you can still find it in the recycling but the files may be permanently lost when the recycling bin is emptied.Special software exists that is able to find deleted files.folders, and even partitions.These tools range from free to paid.For the purpose of this article,I will discuss only free tools.One of the best free tools out there to find deleted music,documents,videos and pictures is Pandora Recovery.You can download it from this link.Do not install the application on the same drive you want to recover files from.installing the application on the same drive may cause some files to be permanently deleted since some files may be overwritten.Install the drive as a secondary drive or use an enclosure to access it as an external drive.The guide below will walk you through recovering files with Pandora Recovery.
The first screen you see after installing the software should looks like this
Click Next,The wizard then asks you if your lost files are found in the recycling bin.In the case the answer is no,since we emptied our recycling bin.
The wizard then shows a list of disc drives.Select the drive that you want to recover files from then click Next.
There are three options on the next screen,first option is “Browse”.This option quickly helps you to browse recently deleted files and folders.
The second option which is “Search”.Helps you to search for deleted files by parameters such as creation date,file size etc.
The third option “Deep(Surface) Scan” searches for specific file types such as music,pictures,documents etc. This option is best for recovering files from corrupted and formatted hard drives.Some of the files may not have names and will be given names such as FILE0001 etc since this method doesn’t search for files based on the Master File Table(MFT).
Select the option that best suits you and click next.Pandora Recovery will not get to work to find your deleted files.
Once you find the deleted file or folder.Click “recover” on the menu to recover the file/folder.Do not save recovered files to the same drive you recovered them from because you can risk loosing unrecovered files permanently if they are overwritten.
The image below shows Pandora recovering files I deleted from my external hard drive to my C: drive
Other free tools for data recovering include PC File Inspector,Recuva and Undelete Plus.
