Strategies for Recovering Lost FilesOK, you're interested in recovering one or more lost files from your hard drive. You are at the third stage in the process. You lost it, you screamed, now you want it back. Anyway, how did you lose the file?
As you will see, file recovery from your hard drive is possible in all these situations. Recovering lost file from normal deletion in Windows™Let's deal with the simplest case first... If you had deleted the file (or folder) using Windows Explorer or My Computer, and you have not emptied your recycle bin, most likely you can restore it directly from the recycle bin. Just double-click the recycle bin icon on your desktop to open the listing of recently deleted files. The files are listed in alphabetical order by default. You may sort them by the date they were deleted, the location from where they were deleted, by size, and by file type as well. If you find the file in the list, just right click it and choose restore. It should go back to where you had it when you deleted it. You can also search the listing for the file
by name - even if you do not remember the full name of the file. Any
sequence of characters in the file name will do. Recovering lost file that is somewhere other than the recycle binThis is when you downloaded a picture, for example and saved it somewhere. You know it is on the drive, but where? You simple do a search. The file is not lost, you probably just don't know where you have put it. So... Click Start -- Search -- For Files or Folders. This brings up the Windows Search utility.
In the file search window you may want to do the following:
Look in the list of files found for your file. What if the file was deleted but is not in the recycle bin?Neither of the examples of recovering lost files given above apply to you? Well there is still hope. If you deleted a file from the command prompt don't expect it to be in the recycle bin. It's gone! But not quite. You still won't be able to find it in DOS or Windows by normal means. When a file is deleted from the hard drive the contents of that file are not necessarily destroyed. The operating system (DOS, Windows, etc) simply removes the reference to the location of that file. If the size of the deleted file is greater than the maximum file size setting for the recycle bin, Windows would have warned you that the file will not be able to be retrieved once deleted. Windows would not keep a copy in the recycle bin. Another thing to note is that the file is not necessarily stored in one physical location on the hard drive either. Pieces of the file could be scattered all over the drive. It depends on how fragmented the drive is. Given this background information, you see that it required some special software to recover a lost file that is not in your recycle bin. In another article on this site, I explained how I used System mechanic 4 Professional in recovering deleted files on 120GB hard drive.
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recovering lost files Recovering lost file taken by a virus or wormWhen you are certain your file is missing because of a virus on your computer, you first zap that virus **then** try to recover the file. Another document on this site describes one of the leading anti virus programs in use today. Click here to read about Norton anti virus software. Preventing recovering lost file ranting and screaming"An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure". It's true every time. Here are some measures you can take to prevent having to swear or to ask, "Where is my file?" 1 - Defrag your hard driveRun a defrag program every once in awhile - at least every month, more often depending on your hard drive activity. What this does is, to prevent each file from being stored in too many places (pieces) on the hard drive. If you have to do a recovery, the chance of finding the whole file in tact is significantly improved the less fragmented the file is. Use the Defrag utility that is a part of the Windows operating system or some other utility like Norton System Works. 2 - Backup your filesThis point most important and the practice should regular operation for every computer user - at home or on the job. If a file is accidentally deleted you can rely on backups to recover most of your lost files - except those that were not included in the backup archive. 3 - Keep a copy of a good file restore program handySystem mechanic 4 Pro is great. I use it, it works, it saved the day for me recently. Some file restore programs will have to be installed before the damage is done. If that were the case with System Mechanic 4 Professional, I'd still be screaming. Recover deleted file with System Mechanic 4 Professional from Amazon.
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