You selected it, clicked the right mouse button and commanded: Delete. But damn, that wasn’t the file you wanted to delete.
And now you despair, believing that you have lost forever that list of contacts that took you years to compile, the thesis that you had to present in a week or the photos of when your children started to walk.
Do not panic. It has a solution.
There are two options to recover those important files and make it seem like nothing happened. One is to recover them by self or second is to take help from proven data recovery. As well as, in this article I mentioned few simple ways to recover your data.
Of course, it is advisable that you get started as soon as possible and that your hard drive is in good condition.
1. Search the Trash
If you were smart enough not to right-click again and select “Empty Recycle Bin,” the file should be there.
And the Trash is a kind of folder in which content is stored, although it has some special characteristics.
The main one is that it has a capacity (in megabytes) assigned by Windows or iOS, a percentage of the size of your hard drive. When it fills up, the trash automatically starts deleting files, starting from the oldest.
So, if you’re lucky and there’s still room left, you’ll find your precious file there.
And to recover it you will only have to click on it and select the Restore this element option.
You can also rescue each and every one of the files in that folder, in the same way but choosing the Restore all items option.
Once this is done, the items will return to the same place they were when you deleted them.
2. Download a recovery
This is the route you should take if you were not so lucky and the files are no longer in the recycle bin.
The good news is that computers never actually delete what you deleted.
This means that if you accidentally emptied the Trash, the data, the ones and zeros that make up the documents that you think you have irretrievably lost, are still recorded on the disk.
Therefore, all you need to overcome the disaster is data recovery software.
There are several options on the Internet and many of them are free. Here we present the most popular ones.
Recuva
It is the best-known free software for this type of tasks.
It was developed by Piriform, the team behind the successful CCleaner cleaner, an application to remove unnecessary files from Windows and thus improve computer performance.
Recuva is compatible with both the Microsoft and Apple operating systems and you will find it on the program’s download page on the internet.
Once downloaded, a shortcut to the Desktop will be created. And the easiest thing is to use the wizard that starts by default when you open the program.
The program allows you to choose the type of file to recover: documents, music, videos and images. And also which storage drive you want to scan.
Of course, it is more efficient with recently deleted files. So if you deleted it six months ago, chances are you won’t be able to recover it.
Data Recovery
Like Recuva, it is compatible with Microsoft and Apple and also has an intuitive interface that helps you carry out the task step by step.
To use this program from the EaseUS developer, you must first choose the type of file you want to restore (documents, music, videos, graphic elements, emails), although you can also select All files.
Then you will have to point out where you lost your files, whether in the Recycle Bin, on the Desktop, My Documents, partitions, or on any external removable devices, since its scanner will check each of the devices connected to the computer.
In case you don’t remember where you deleted it from, it also offers you the I don’t remember option.
If you chose the All files option in the previous step, after the scan you will be shown a preview of the items found. So you will only have to click on the one you are interested in to recover it. And if you don’t find the file you’re interested in in the list, you can always request a deeper scan.DiskDigger
Its icon, a shovel on zeros and some stacked on the earth, leaves no room for doubt. This free download application from the developer Defiant Technologies is used to unearth that file that you deleted or lost in that mess that is your computer.
It is not compatible with the iOS operating system, but it is compatible with Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux.
In addition to hard drives, DiskDigger is equally effective for recovering documents or multimedia files from USB sticks, memory cards (SD, CompactFlash or Memory Stick) or smartphones with the Android operating system.
The entire program is a single executable file and can be run without installing it. Thus, it does not take up space or leave any trace once used.
