Have you accidentally deleted some important files from your computer and have even emptied the Recycle Bin? Or, may be that, you had intentionally deleted some files earlier; but now you need those deleted files? Okay. Don’t worry. In spite of the fact that your files have been deleted and they don’t exist even in the Recycle Bin, it may still be possible to recover or restore your deleted or erased files, using a simple utility called Restoration that is absolutely free.
What happens when a file is deleted from the computer? How can it be recovered?
Let me first answer these questions before I explain the features of Restoration software.
When you a delete a file or a folder from the hard disk of your computer, the Windows in fact does not delete them immediately; it merely transfers such deleted file or folder to the Recycle Bin. However, a file deleted from a floppy disk or a network drive or other such removable media, is not sent to the Recycle Bin. Such deleted files or folders remain in the Recycle Bin till you decide to empty the Recycle Bin by permanently deleting them. Such deleted files / folders can be undeleted or restored to their original location from the Recycle Bin.
But, what happens when the Recycle Bin itself is emptied and all files in it are permanently deleted? Can you also recover or restore such permanently deleted items thereafter? Yes. Even such files which have been permanently deleted by emptying the Recycle Bin can also be recovered in certain situations. How? [If you’re interested to learn how to permanently delete files from your computer so that they could never be recovered, then please read my earlier article Permanently delete your files and their contents.]
In fact, when you empty the Recycle Bin (which Microsoft calls “permanently deleting the file”), what actually happens is that the Windows deletes the records of that file from the operating system, i.e., its address is deleted from the Windows records. However, the contents of the file still remain on the memory of the hard disk. The only difference is that the contents of the file are now like an orphan or without address, which cannot be located easily now.
A good software utility can however locate the address of such deleted files and can restore them from the memory of the hard disk. But then, it is not possible always. To understand this, let’s first see what happens after the contents of the deleted files become orphan or without address.
The contents of the file so deleted are now in an orphan state in certain sectors of the hard disk memory. Now, if the user wants to create some new files, etc., or otherwise requires more hard disk memory, the Windows may re-allocate the same memory space which was earlier occupied by such deleted file. In such a situation, the contents of the deleted file are over-written by some other file and these contents could not be recovered now to the extent they have been overwritten by some other file.
However, many a time, it may so happen that if abundant memory is otherwise available (especially nowadays, when hard disk memories have increased drastically which generally remain unused) or if the user is rarely using his computer, the Windows may not re-allocate the memory space occupied earlier by such deleted file. In such a situation, the contents of the deleted file continue to be available on the hard disk memory, albeit in the orphan state, i.e., without an address. However, it does not mean that these contents cannot be located or recovered, though a novice cannot do that. But, an expert can easily recover such contents of the deleted file under certain situations. In fact, Restoration is a free software that can easily undelete such deleted files or can recover such deleted files in situations like those explained above.
Restoration software:
Okay. Now let me explain about Restoration utility. It is a software written by Brian Kato. It is absolutely free and is of a very small size (download size only about 193 KB). You can download it from here or from here. The downloaded files from both these sources were found to be virus-free when I checked them through VirusTotal which checked these files online using 41 leading anti-virus programs; see the reports of the virus-check here (for the first source) and here (for the second source). [If you want to learn as to how to check free online for possible viruses in your suspicious file, read my earlier article Free online scan for viruses in a file using dozens of anti-virus programs.]
Restoration is a very simple and straightforward utility and I’ve been personally using it for last several years. It does not require any installation and you can run its executable file from any folder on your Windows computer or from the USB drive also. It can run on almost all versions of Windows, namely, Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / XP / Vista.
When you start this program, you can scan for all the deleted files (that can be recovered) on a particular drive, for example, on the “C” drive, by selecting the drive and then clicking on the “Search deleted files” button. Or else, to confine the search to a limited number of deleted files, you can enter the part of the name (or the extension, such as .DOC) under the “All or part of the file” field. If you leave this field blank, Restoration will check for all deleted files on a drive. See the following image showing results for scanning the “C” hard drive for all recoverable deleted files; it shows that 26496 deleted files can be recovered on the “C” drive!!! But, please remember that some of the recovered files may not open correctly if their data has been partly corrupted or overwritten. However, many such recovered files can be opened properly. It all depends on the condition of the recovered file.
For recovering the file which is shown by Restoration utility after the scan is completed, simply select the file and then click on the Restore by copying button. It will ask you to save the restored file with the name and path that you can supply. It will also suggest you to save the restored or recovered file on a drive different from the drive from which it is being recovered; this is for the simple reason that during the recovery process, it may be writing to disk while saving it and it may accidentally overwrite over the memory which contains the deleted file which is being recovered or which could be recovered.
Once you save the recovered file, the deleted file gets restored. That’s it!
It may be mentioned that you can also use Restoration utility to scan all clusters on a drive for searching for the deleted files. For this purpose, click on Others menu and then click on the Scan All Clusters menu item.
Restoration utility can also be used to permanently delete the files scanned by it!!!
I may point out that when Restoration utility shows the results of the scan for searching deleted files on your computer, you can not only recover the desired deleted files, but you can also permanently delete those deleted files that are not required by you or that are sensitive files so that such permanently deleted files could never be recovered subsequently. For this purpose, select the desired deleted file, click on Others menu and then click on the Delete Completely menu item. This will permanently delete the selected deleted file from the memory of your computer.
The precaution to take if you’ve just accidentally deleted some important files that you want to recover now:
If you’ve just deleted some important files accidentally and you want to recover it now itself, then the first step you must take is to stop using your computer immediately. Let the computer remain as it is. Don’t disturb any program. This is so because if you try to start or close any program, your computer will write some data on the hard drive; while doing so there is a likelihood (howsoever remote it may be) that it may overwrite on that area of the memory which contains your just deleted files. So, don’t use the computer unnecessarily till you’ve first tried to recover your deleted files. If you try to recover the deleted files immediately after they were deleted, there is a good possibility that you may be in a position to recover it without much damage. So, immediately start Restoration utility and try to recover the just deleted files using the method already described.
Conclusion:
Thus, you can use Restoration software to recover or un-erase your deleted files irrespective of the type of files, i.e., whether they are music files, photo/picture files, video files, Word documents, PDF documents, executable files, or any other type of files. You can also use Restoration to recover deleted files from your USB drive.
However, as I mentioned earlier, not all deleted files can be recovered. And, moreover, not all recovered may open properly (since some files might have been damaged irreparably in part or in full). But, something is better than nothing. In any case, there is no harm in giving Restoration a try, which is a free utility and moreover, even if you can recover some of the important files deleted by you earlier, it should be good enough. In fact, when you compare the performance of Restoration utility with other similar utilities, it compares reasonably well.
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Great bit of information shared through this post. Thanks.