Masterclass: Recover your lost files

Install PC Inspector File Recovery and launch it using an administrator account. Select the required language. The program’s startup screen provides access to the recover, restore and rescue functions, and a brief description is provided that makes it clear which icon should be clicked.

Recovery options
Begin by clicking the first icon, ‘Recover deleted files’, to search for deleted files that can be recovered. Now choose the disk that originally held the files and click the green tick icon to continue. There will be a pause while the disk is scanned for recoverable files and a Windows Explorer-style tree structure will be displayed listing the results. A folder called Deleted is at the root, and any recoverable files and folders are listed beneath this. In the right-hand pane, right-click a file or folder and select the ‘Save to’ option to specify a recovery location.

The process is very similar if you need to hunt for data on a disk that has been formatted. Click the second icon on the PC Inspector File Recovery startup screen (‘Find lost data’) and select the relevant disk in the same way. When the ‘Select cluster range’ dialogue box appears, move the first slider all the way to the left, and the second one all the way to the right before clicking the green icon. This type of scan takes significantly longer, and results are displayed in much the same way, although this time the folder at the root of the search tree is labelled ‘Lost’. Recovery of files is achieved using the same method as before.

Recover data from memory cards
The maker of PC Inspector File Recovery produces another program called PC Inspector Smart Recovery. This is specifically designed to recover files deleted from memory cards, which are often used in digital cameras. Recovery is a simple three-step process: select the relevant disk from the first dropdown menu, use the second menu to choose the file type to search for and then select a destination folder before clicking the Start button. Recoverable files will be automatically copied to the selected location.

A similar program is Zero Assumption Recovery. The evaluation version can be used free of charge to search for and recover image files. However, to get full use of the program and unlock the option for recovering all types of file, you need the paid-for version. As the program costs $49.95 (around £25), it is a good idea to try PC Inspector File Recovery first.

Rearguard recovery
Although no new software should be installed to a hard disk from which data needs to be recovered (because of the risk that the installation will overwrite files that could otherwise be restored), it may not always be possible to install the problematic hard disk into another PC. If this is the scenario, it is worth exploring some of the ‘portable’ data-recovery programs.

Such tools do not require installation and can be run entirely from a removable disk, such as a USB memory key. Even so, any recoverable data which might found should be restored to a disk other than that from which it is being recovered: another hard disk, for example.

Note that both the programs we’re about to use must be run in administrator mode if used under Windows Vista. To do this, simply right-click the executable file and select the ‘Run as administrator’ option before entering the relevant password and pressing Enter.

The first program worthy of mention is Portable Data Recovery, which can be downloaded free of charge from www.snipurl.com/4cno9. We’d advise downloading it via a second computer if at all possible, to avoid the risk of overwriting data.

After extracting the program from its compressed Zip file, launch it by double-clicking the executable file. Select a disk from the list to the left of the window and click the Scan button. If the scanning process does not find the missing files, click OK to perform a more intensive scan; if the first scan is successful, click Cancel instead.