I’ve been there, and I’m sure you have too. You’ve spent hours on a document, you go to bed, and the next morning, it’s gone! Oh crud! Now what? Here are three free Windows utilities that have worked charms for me:
The first thing I’d try is an utility called Free File Recovery by AVN Media Technologies. This does basic file recovery, and does not scan sector by sector. Still, it has on occasion done the trick for me.
The second tool I’d recommend is called simply Restoration, and does not require installation. It goes deeper than Free File Recovery, and actually scans sectors separately. While less intuitive than Free File Recovery, this, too, has saved me on occasion.
The third and last tool I’m going to recommend is called PC Inspector File Recovery, and comes from a German company called Convar.
The most important tip I can give you when it comes to recovering lost files is to use the storage media in question as little as possible until you can actually try to restore the lost data, as any use will increase the likelyhood that the file will be lost forever.
Tag: file restore
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Three free tools to restore and recover files
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Simple file restore
Ever delete a file you shouldn’t have? Sure you have! We all have, at some point or another. And we have all regretted it. Whether it was a system file of some sort, the holiday photos of the family, or the lease for your house, it’s always annoying.
My girlfriend gave me a flash drive the other day, on which were some photos that she’d accidentally deleted. She asked me to see what I could save, and so I did. I’d seen a review a few weeks earlier of a program I wanted to try out, and here was the perfect opportunity. The program is simply called Restoration and can be found here.
When downloaded, you do not need to install it, rather the executable runs without installation. You then select the drive to scan, and the program shows you the files available like so:
While it does not necessarily find all deleted files, in my tests it found most of them, and allowed me to quickly and simply copy them to a different drive.