How To Retrieve A Deleted File
Your first reaction if you’ve just accidentally deleted a file on your computer is probably to go to the recycle bin. Depending on where you deleted the file from, there’s a good chance that your file will be sitting there , waiting for you to click “restore”.
But if you didn’t delete the file in such a way that it shows in your recycle bin, what next? Does that mean that it’s been lost forever? Murphy’s Law says that files deleted by accident are usually ones that you haven’t got a backup of. Grrrr!
Forunately it’s almost always, it’s possible to retrieve a file from oblivion. Even if your recycle bin thinks otherwise. This is because the Windows filing system doesn’t delete the file but rather it flags the space occupied as something it can use again when it needs to.
The problem is that the more you do on your computer, the higher the chance that Windows will overwrite some or all of the lost file, which will make recovering it expensive or maybe not even possible.
So you need to stop what you’re doing on your computer. That really does mean stop, not just slow down. Including web browsing, scanning your iTunes library, and so on. The more things you do, the higher the chance that Windows decide that the space previously occupied by the file is space it can use elsewhere.
If you’ve got access to another computer, use it to download a program like this one to undelete files. If you can’t get hold of a different computer then it’s possible that you’ll be OK using your only computer (the chance increases if there is a large amount of disk space left unused) but this is definitely not the best way.
Once you’ve got your copy of a program to undelete files, it’s just a matter of pressing “next” most of the time and there’s an exceptionally big probability that the software will recover the file you accidentally deleted.
You can download a file undelete program here. It’s even got a free trial, you can be 100% sure it will work for you.
