Five Great Solutions to Recover Deleted Files

Have you accidentally deleted a file from your computer and want it back? We analyze five programs that might help you.

Broadly speaking, one can say that the hard drive of a computer functions as a huge library: has many “boxes” in which pieces of information stored. The location of these compartments is recorded in a kind of index, so by consulting the hard drive knows where each fragment is stored.

When a file is deleted, it is not actually deleted from the disc compartment where it is stored, but its reference to that index. Therefore, though the hard disk space occupied is free, but the information would stay there until other information is save on this same space and overwrite the original data.

This means that if you delete something by mistake, you can recover almost completely, if you act quickly and before the hard drive again perform write operations on the space occupied by the deleted file.

Recover deleted information is not always easy, it is sometimes necessary to ask for help from professionals who are able to recover much of the data. However, it is convenient to have on hand some simple file recovery tool, to use it immediately and reduce the risk of losing information if required at any given time.

There are many useful data recovery software on the market; then we detail our selection.

Amigabit Data Recovery –recover deleted files from hard disk and portable devices, even from formatted partitions and RAID.  

After running a deep scan by Amigabit Data Recovery on the disk drive, a list of recovered files would be displayed; you can select those you need to recover. Lost files can be restored at any location, whether on the local disk as network drives or external memories.

It has a free version offer recovering 2GB of data for free, and two paid versions with unlimited data recovery and added functionality and technical support.

Undelete Plus – recover files from any physical or logical drive (except CD / DVD).

After scanning for all lost data, the list of all recoverable files shown classified by content (images, text, archives …) making it easy to find the information you want to restore. It also allows filtering by file name, date, size, etc. As in other applications, the files can be restored to any location. The application can be downloaded for free, but you should buy license code to register.

Pandora Recovery – recover encrypted files and complete folders.

Scanning and recovery is the most agile of all compared, and also has filtered to find the file name, date, size.

Includes preview functionality, especially useful when it comes to retrieving images.

The application is free and can be downloaded freely. It also has a portable version, but it is chargeable.

TestDisk – application to recover deleted files

No GUI features, but works directly to launch commands, making it unfriendly.

It is ideal for people who use Linux and are used to working with console commands.

No supports ext3 or ext4 partitions, but can be supplemented with PhotoRec, originally designed to recover files from SD card images. It is also available as a Live CD or Live USB recovery.

FineRecovery – application to recover deleted files

It incorporates the same features as the rest (search, preview) and runs fast and robust, but the demo version does not allow recovering files larger than 64Kb.

The next time you delete a file by mistake, remember: do not perform operations that involve writing to disk (install a program, save a file …) and run the data recovery software as soon as possible. It is very possible that you can recover deleted files without problems.

During data restoration, try to save the recovered file in a different location instead of the original, to avoid overwriting the original data.