Masterclass: Recover your lost files

Whether it comes about as a result of accidental deletion, computer hardware failure or the malicious actions of another user, losing files can be a traumatic experience.

The number of files that computer users store nowadays is staggering. From digital photographs and music files to business documents and personal letters, there is enormous scope for losing irreplaceable data should the worst happen.

However, when a file is deleted in Windows, it is not actually erased from the hard disk. Instead, Windows merely marks the area of the disk that the file occupied as being available to store data, and until this area of the hard disk is required to store another file, the original ‘deleted’ file may remain fundamentally intact.

This fact is exploited by data-recovery software, and in this Masterclass we’ll take a look at some ways in which you can get your lost files back. We’ll also explain what to do next if such tools are unsuccessful in retrieving your data.

Don’t forget to back up
The importance of backing up files can never be overstated, and it is something that we at Computeractive strongly advocate. You should, at all times, operate a regular backup procedure. Whether this is once a day, once a week or once a month depends on how important you consider your data to be.

If you take a daily backup each night, say, and find out the following morning that an important file is corrupt, you can then call on the backup.

But that’s enough preaching. All too many people find themselves in something of a tricky situation: they don’t have that life-saving backup, but they have a suffered hard-disk failure or accidentally deleted an important file. It is at this crucial point that data-recovery software comes into its own.

Stop right now
The moment you discover that files are inaccessible ­ either as a result of deletion or formatting a disk disk ­ it is vitally important not to use the disk on which the files were originally stored. This is because any newly generated files ­ whether they are images or documents saved by the user, or temporary files created by just browsing the internet ­ may overwrite otherwise recoverable data and render it useless.

One way to look at it is to think about the Recycle Bin. Files that are deleted in Windows are moved to the Recycle Bin. They will remain there, and can be easily restored, until the Recycle Bin is emptied by the user; or until, eventually, the Recycle Bin begins deleting older content to make room for more recently deleted files. Data-recovery software offers an additional safety net, but the relevant precautions need to be taken for it to work properly.

On the road to recovery
Installing recovery software in advance as a precautionary measure is the best course of action. This is for precisely the same reason as why files should not be created after a problem has occurred: the very act of installing recovery software may overwrite the part of the hard disk where the lost data resides.

One way around this ­ and it is an ideal option if accidental formatting or hard-disk failure has resulted in a PC that won’t start up ­ is to remove the disk that holds the lost data and install it in a different PC as a secondary disk.

The chosen recovery software can then be safely installed to the main hard disk of the second PC, without fear of damaging the data on the original disk.

One of the most comprehensive free data-recovery programs is PC Inspector File Recovery. This program can recover files that have been deleted, restore data from disks that have been formatted and even rescue data from a disk that appears corrupt or otherwise cannot be accessed through Windows.