How to recover previously deleted files in Windows
September 28th, 2007 by Ross McKillop |
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This tutorial will guide you in using Restoration 2.5.14, a free program that can help you recover files that you may have accidentally deleted (and removed from/emptied the Recycle Bin).
- Get started by downloading Restoration 2.5.14. Restoration works in Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2K/XP on FAT 12, 16, 32 and NTFS file systems. When you run the file it will ask you to extract its contents to C:Restoration, which is as good a place as any. With that said, you can extract the contents anywhere you want, just remember where.
Navigate to that folder and double-click Restoration.exe.
- Select the drive you want to scan (the default is C:) from the Drives drop down list. Then, click the Search Deleted Files button.
- Sit back and watch as Restoration searches for files that have been previously deleted. Depending on the size and speed of your drive, how many files you’ve stored and deleted, it can take up to a minute to complete the scan.
- And then you’ll be presented with a list of files that you can recover. On my 200GB C: drive, that I haven’t wiped clean in a couple of years, I was able to find 11,721 files that could be recovered.
Side Note: that’s a LOT of files to be able to restore. This is another example of why you should use the Eraser utility to securely delete files.
- Use the search box to narrow down the files you want to restore. In the example screenshot below there were 2 Firefox cookie files, and one IE cookie file that I could have restored.
- You can also search for files by type - for example - enter in .txt, click Search Deleted Files, and all of the recoverable text files will be listed.
- To restore a file, select it by clicking on it once, then click the Restore by Copying button.
- You’ll be prompted to choose a location to save that (recovered) file to. Click Save when you’re done.
- If you opted to save the file on the save drive that it was recovered from, Restoration will ask if you’d rather save it on another drive. Click Yes to save the file anyway (without changing the location) or No, to change the save location. Repeat as needed until all of the files you need to recover are restored.
4 Responses to “How to recover previously deleted files in Windows”
By Marc on Oct 9, 2007 | Reply
you can also consider this website http://www.fileslost.com
By chula on Oct 17, 2007 | Reply
fileslost.com works effeciently in recovering the deleted file, I just got my files back without paying anything