Surely all of us have faced this before. I know I do. Sometimes you delete a file because you know it will still be safely tuck in the Recycle Bin. Then oops! you just cleared the Recycle Bin because your harddisk space is getting low.

But for me, the most common accidental deletion of file is because of Shift-Delete. I love to Shift-Delete. Its like doing 2 things at once, and you can keep your Recycle Bin clean and empty. Bad idea though so don’t follow what I did.

Now, back to the topic. Oh no! The file is gone. You check and recheck in your Recycle Bin and the file is no where to be found. Do not worry. There are actually ways to recover it.

Technical box:
Actually, your files are still there. You see, your files are written on your harddisk and Windows knows this, so they do not allow any other files to overwrite the file (that is equivalent to rubbing the whiteboard and write another note on the same spot). However, when you delete the file and cleared the Recycle Bin, Windows now allows any new files to overwrite the old deleted file. But its still there, until it is actually written over by a new file. This could take days, hours or even minutes depending on luck. The key here is, to act fast the moment you deleted the file.

Step 1. Go to http://www.recuva.com/download/builds and click on the first download link. You will download an exe file which will install the file recovery tool. No worries, it is free and legal.

Step 2. Of course, the next step is to install the application. Remember to un-check the Optional Yahoo! toolbar though. It is checked on by default. That’s not cool.

Step 3. Once done, run the application by clicking on its icon in your Start menu. Tell it what sort of files you want to recover. There are a few options like Pictures, Movies, Documents, Video and Others. You can choose Others and it’ll show all recoverable files. Basically, the options are just filters. I suggest you choose Others. Next, it’ll ask you to choose the location where your file was before it got deleted. Just select one and if you are not really sure where it was, just select I’m not sure. Click Next and it’ll begin to start searching.
 

Step 4. And off it goes. Go grab a cup of coffee and relax while it searches for all recoverable deleted files. It may take a while depending on the size of your harddisk. Watch the progress and just breath deeply.

Step 5. Here it comes! A list of all files that it has found will be displayed. Click on the Switch to Advance Mode button to get more options (button at top right). In this mode, you’ll see a search textbox at the top right where you can type in the name of your exact filename. Now go find that file! When you see your file, click on the checkbox on the left to select it. Ignore the Green, Orange and Red icons. Regardless the 3 colours, all files listed can be recovered.

Step 6. Now with the files you want selected. Click on the Recover button found at the bottom right. A pop up will ask you where you want to restore the file to. Just select the desktop so you can find it much easier. Click ok. If it pops up a warning regarding the same drive or something, not to worry, just click OK.

And voila! Your files are now sitting on your desktop, waiting for you to accidently delete it again. Haha, lets hope you learnt your lesson and will be more careful the next time.

Cheers, and wish you all the best in finding your lost files!