Document Recovery

Recovering An Accidentally Deleted File

Recovering from an accidentally deleted file is a relatively simple process, but is also time-critical. When you ’delete’ a file from the Recycle Bin in Windows (or in many other operating systems), it does not delete the file from the disk, it just marks the space where the file was as free space that the OS can write over. This means that, if you are fast enough, you can save the file.

The process is time limited, so the OS will have overwritten files that were marked years ago. But, depending on the amount of free space is on the drive (also fragmentation), you may be able to recover files that were deleted up to two weeks prior.

The free software we have available in these situations is called Recuva (pronounced recover). It’s made by a company called Piriform, who also make CCleaner

How To Recover Accidentally Deleted Files With Recuva

To start, download Recuva here and install. When you start the application, you will be presented with a screen welcoming you to the application and prompting you to click next to follow the wizard. Simply follow these steps and eventually it will start to scan your computer for all the deleted files it can find.

You will then be presented with a list of files it has found with a colour next to them. Green files can be fully recovered, yellow files can be partially recovered. And red files- well, red files are gone, man.

Recovering Files From A Formatted Partition

Recovering from a formatted partition is much the same as recovering an accidentally deleted file. When you format any drive, you do not actually ’delete’ any files, it is just like ripping the contents page out of a huge book. All the files are there, the computer just has no idea where any of them are - and thus cant display them.

How To Recover Files From A Format With Recuva

To recover these, download Recuva here or move over from R drive and install. When you start the application, you will be presented with a screen welcoming you to the application and prompting you to click next to follow the wizard. Click Cancel on this wizard as by default, Recuva does not search for non-deleted files (which is what formating a drive produces).

Click the button labeled ’Options’ and then the tab ’Actions’. In here you will see a checkbox captioned ’Scan For Non-Deleted Files (for recovery from damaged or reformatted disks)’. Check this, Click OK, select the disk in question from the dropdown box on the left and click ’Scan’.

You will then be presented with a list of files it has found with a color next to them. Greens can be fully recovered, yellows can be partially recovered. And reds, well reds are gone, man.

Recovering Files From A Damaged/Lost Drive/Partition

You know that your drive partition is damaged if, when you plug it in, a message pops up like the one above. These are pretty annoying as the actual partition itself needs to be recovered. Not individual bits in the partition.

The tool I use for this is MiniTool Partition Wizard, another free tool. You can download this from Download.com here.

MiniTool themselves do a very nice tutorial on how to use their software here. Follow these steps and you should be in pretty good shape.

Please note: if this fails, then you can go into a computer shop to try restoring the file. They'll likely also be able to provide a bootable CD that you can use on your device if the drive that also has your Windows or Linux installation on it is the one with the corrupt partition. Download here and follow the steps here. A damaged partition may be a sign that your drive is failing, so be sure to move data off that drive just in case.

Recovering Data From A Physically Damaged Drive

Your best bet is to give it to the professionals. Google ’data recovery’ followed by your city and you should have someone near you.

Recovering Data from Non-Bootable Computer

There are two options if you need to obtain files from a non-bootable hard drive before doing a reinstall and losing all of your files. These recovery options should not be attempted on your own - you should be seeking the assistance of a computer repair store for to make use of these options

Hard Drive Docking Station

Option one is using a hard drive docking station. This option is a bit risker for the user, a user will need to dismantle the computer to gain access to the hard drive and could cause damge to their computer from static electricty. This is known as electrostatic discharge, or ESD . This can be avoided by using an anti-static wrist strap . Once the hard drive is removed, plug the docking station into another computer and insert the bad hard drive into the docking station. The hard drive should appear as an external hard drive under My Computer.

USB Bootable Linux

Option two is creating a bootable Linux system. This would be the easiest solution. Ubuntu has a walkthrough on how to create a bootable linux operating system. This allows the computer to boot into a Linux system from a USB and will allow you to view the files on the bad hard drive.