Question: I've heard of companies finding data that people thought they had deleted from their work computer. How do they do that? Might be good information in case I accidentally delete some important files from my home computer too!

Answer: Yes, there are several ways to retrieve data that has been deleted from a computer system, even if you've deleted them from the recycle bin or reformatted your hard drive.

I accidentally deleted a year's worth of family photos and financial documents on my wife's laptop, after using the factory restore CD that reinstalled Windows and removed her user folder where all the pictures were stored. Even after that mistake, I was still able to recover all of the files.

Why files can usually be recovered even after they've been deleted:

When you delete a file, Windows only marks the file as deleted, but doesn't actually remove it from your system. Those files are only truly deleted (well, replaced actually) when other data is saved to the same location on your hard drive.

The reason our deleted files were recoverable is that no other data had been saved to those same places on the hard drive.

How to recover files that have been deleted:

If you've accidentally deleted an important file or erased a folder containing files that you later realize you still need, don't worry. Chances are good that they're still on your system and in good shape.

You'll need a good data recovery program that can find files that have been deleted. I've tried a few different programs that claim to be able to do this, but have discovered that some of them are only able to show you what's still in your Recycle Bin. That's not much help if you've emptied your Recycle Bin, so I wasn't impressed.

Here's the data recovery test I use to determine if a program can actually recover files after they've been deleted:

  1. Delete a file or folder
  2. Empty out the Recycle Bin
  3. Run the data recovery program and see if it's able to find and recover the file.

I did this test with iRecover and discovered that it was able to not only find the test file I had deleted, but it also found hundreds of files from folders that I remember deleting several days ago.

iRecover is an advanced data recovery program that will help you recover data that was lost because of file system corruption, formatting, virus damage, partition deletion... or in my case - user error.

Here's a screenshot of iRecover that shows all of the files and folders it was able to recover after completely clearing out my Recycle Bin:

Here are some other features worth noting for iRecover:

  • Supports FAT, FAT32, NTFS and Ext2 formatted drives
  • Extracts data from lost partitions
  • Recovers data from deleted partitions (partition recovery)
  • Unformat recovery - Recover data from corrupt, not formatted, RAW partitions
  • Recovers data from formatted partitions (unformat recovery)
  • Retrieves data from severely corrupted disks and volumes
  • Digital image recovery, digital photo recovery - recovers deleted files from memory cards (e.g. camera flash cards)

The trick to effective file recovery is to not wait until you delete a file to install data recovery software. By installing it after the fact, you might actually install it on top of the very files you're trying to recover!

A safer approach is to get iRecover and install it on your system so that it's ready to find your deleted files as close to the time of deletion as possible (to minimize the chances of the file getting overwritten on your hard drive with other data).

An Ounce of Prevention

It's also a great idea to frequently backup your hard drive, so that you can still restore important files, even if they can't be recovered using a file recovery program. I bought a Seagate FreeAgent 320 GB USB External Hard Drive. This new drive plugs in via USB cable and doesn't require any installation or configuration. Windows automatically recognizes it when you plug in the USB cable, and it has plenty of space for backing up both of my home computers.

I highly recommend that you backup your hard drive on at least a monthly basis, although weekly is even better. If you're looking for a good backup program for your home computer, I recommend Genie Backup Manager which I use for my home systems.

I consider myself fortunate to have been able to retrieve our family photos and financial documents... and my wife is finally willing to speak to me again. However, I'm hoping to avoid this whole scenario in the future by making regular backups to this new backup drive (at least weekly).

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