Is it possible to recover a deleted file? How and in what cases can you recover deleted files on your computer?

It is difficult to find a user who has never had to bite their elbows, for example, after accidentally deleting an important document from a disk or an interesting photo from a memory card - this can happen in the hustle and bustle, or simply due to banal absent-mindedness. Of course, bringing a file deleted from your hard drive in the usual way back to life using Windows is not a problem - you just need to restore it from the recycle bin. However, the Recycle Bin is more or less regularly emptied by special cleaning utilities, and data is often deleted bypassing the Recycle Bin using the Shift + Del key combination (in order to save time and space) - in this case, it will no longer be possible to restore an accidentally deleted file from the Recycle Bin using Windows tools. As for deleting files from USB drives and memory cards, they do not go into the recycle bin at all - which means that it is impossible to restore them using the built-in Windows tools. And finally, accidentally deleting files is not the only way to lose valuable information. You can lose important data in other ways: as a result of a system failure, incorrect operations of a particular program, exposure to viruses, formatting a disk, deleting a partition, etc. In all these cases, Windows tools will not be able to “revive” the files.

So, should you immediately rush to a data recovery specialist when you lose your files? It is not at all necessary if you have a reliable utility to recover accidentally deleted and lost files. As a rule, with its help you can restore at least part of the information without any problems. The main thing is not to waste time and observe certain rules games.

In a nutshell about file loss and recovery

You shouldn’t immediately give up on accidentally deleted files, although they, for example, are not displayed in the corresponding Explorer folder and are not in the Recycle Bin. In reality, deleted files still remain on the media, since deleting them using the operating system does not physically destroy the files. It is not the body of the file that is deleted, but only its header; while the clusters in which it was written are simply marked empty and can be read until they are overwritten by new data. That is why deleted documents, presentations, pictures, etc. can be recovered using specialized utilities.

Recovering lost files is also possible in a number of other situations. For example, after quickly formatting a hard drive - after all, with such a procedure, information about the initial recording of allocated files is reset (for example, in NTFS - in the MFT area), and all other areas of the disk remain unchanged. Some utilities can also recover data from disks that have a damaged file allocation table, a deleted data partition, etc.

However, it would be reckless to say unequivocally that any file (even just deleted from the recycle bin) can always be restored. Alas, this is not the case, and failure is largely due to incorrect user actions. The fact is that any computer activity on a disk from which data was accidentally deleted can lead to the fact that the clusters in which fragments of the corresponding files are located will be overwritten, because the operating system now perceives them as empty. After this, restoring the corresponding files will be more than problematic. Of course, with partial rewriting, a number of utilities restore such files, but it is not at all a fact that such files can then be used (the exception is text documents, individual saved fragments of which can be worked with in the future). As for pictures, music, videos and other things restored after partial re-recording, this is usually futile. That is why, first of all, it is necessary to prevent the possibility of overwriting clusters - that is, do not write anything to a hard drive partition, flash drive or memory card with lost data, otherwise the chances of returning lost information to life will become minimal.

In addition, the possibility of recovering lost data may be associated with a number of circumstances that are no longer dependent on the user at the time of recovery. Thus, the chances of success are higher when recovering files from media formatted in the NTFS file system rather than FAT. The success of restoring a particular file also largely depends on the degree of its fragmentation: if the file is highly fragmented, then you can only hope (and even then with reservations) for its recovery in the NTFS system, but on FAT media it is most likely pointless. Naturally, for this reason, it is especially difficult to recover very large, frequently overwritten files on a heavily filled disk, which, due to circumstances, as a rule, always turn out to be highly fragmented.

It is also worth adding that none of the programs will be able to recover data after guaranteed destruction of information using specialized solutions, as well as low-level formatting.

How to recover files

The most important thing is to start recovering accidentally deleted and lost files as quickly as possible (ideally, immediately after deleting the file), although in practice there are often cases of recovering even long-lost data. However, there is no guarantee that the document you need will be among these invisible “long-livers”, so you should not hesitate.

First, you need to stop any computer activity on the media of interest, since the operating system can write some other data in place of deleted or lost files (even if you yourself did not write anything down at all), run the utility installed on your computer to recover lost files and scan it carrier. The situation becomes more complicated when we are talking about restoring data on the system disk, to which the system is constantly writing something. In this case, it is optimal to remove the hard drive with deleted files and connect it to another computer as a secondary one, and only then begin the recovery process.

As a rule, the default tools in the corresponding tools are a quick scan, carried out by analyzing file records. If during such an analysis the required file cannot be found (this is possible if the disk has been formatted, the partition has been deleted, etc.), then it makes sense to resort to advanced analysis. With this analysis, a deep scan of the disk is performed with full view all sectors - it takes more time, but may turn out to be more effective. In order to speed up the process, you can resort to limiting the search area by data type (images, documents, etc.), file name, etc.

Under no circumstances should you restore data to a scanned disk, although in a number of solutions this is possible (again, due to the danger of overwriting the sectors of interest). Therefore, usually the recovered data is saved to another hard drive, another hard drive partition, or a flash drive.

Before you begin any data recovery efforts, you should consider the possibility that the loss of files may also be caused by a physical malfunction of the device. Most of the solutions discussed in this article will not be able to help in this case, and the process of recovering information in such situations requires certain professional knowledge and experience. In addition, further work with a faulty device may make it completely impossible to recover important folders and files from it. Therefore, in case of loss it is critical important information It is wiser to abandon independent experiments and immediately turn to specialists.

Utilities for recovering lost files

Until recently, utilities for recovering lost files were among the few categories where the bulk were made up of very expensive commercial products, the capabilities of which are completely incomparable to what affordable, much less affordable ones can offer. free utilities. Now the picture has changed noticeably, and today home users, if desired, can easily find on the market effective programs, with the help of which you can not only easily recover accidentally deleted folders and files, but also bring back to life data lost as a result of quickly formatting a disk, deleting a partition, etc. These are the affordable or even free solutions for recovering folders and files - And we'll talk in this article.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery 6.6

Developer: MiniTool Solution Ltd

Distribution size: 5.64 MB

Work under control: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7

Distribution method: shareware (http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/download.html)

Price: Commercial license - $119; Personal license - $59; Free Edition - free (allows you to recover no more than 1 GB of data; only for personal or home use)

MiniTool Power Data Recovery - comprehensive solution for data recovery from hard drives (IDE, SATA, SCSI, USB), memory cards, flash drives, CD/DVD and Blue-ray drives, iPods and other storage media. The program supports FAT12/16/32, VFAT and NTFS file systems and can recover files deleted from the Windows Recycle Bin, find and restore lost data (due to a virus attack, power failure, accidental formatting, partition deletion, etc.). Additionally, you can use this tool to recover data from damaged hard drives, as well as damaged, scratched, or defective CD/DVDs.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery includes five built-in data recovery modules: Undelete Recovery, Damaged Partition Recovery, Lost Partition Recovery, Digital Media Recovery and CD & DVD Recovery (Fig. 1). Each one focuses on different data loss scenarios. The Undelete Recovery module is designed to recover files and folders deleted from the Recycle Bin or using the Shift+Del combination. Works with hard and flash drives, as well as memory cards. Damaged Partition Recovery tool allows you to recover lost data from existing but damaged or formatted partitions. Partitions with MBR and dynamic disks are supported: Simple Volume, Spanned Volume, Stripped Volume and RAID-5 Volume. The Lost Partition Recovery module is used to recover data from a deleted or lost (for example, as a result of disk repartition) partition. The Digital Media Recovery module recovers data from digital multimedia devices (flash drives, flash cards, memory cards, iPods, etc.) and is focused on recovering lost or deleted photos (including in RAW format), music (mp3 files, MP4 files) and video files. CD & DVD Recovery module is used to recover lost and deleted files from damaged, scratched or defective CD/DVD discs. This module works with various types of CD/DVD (CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-R and DVD-RW), supports multisession discs, some UDF discs (recorded using DirectCD, InCD , packetCD) and can recover data from RW disks formatted using quick format.

Rice. 1. MiniTool Power Data Recovery window
with five built-in modules

Despite the lack of Russian-language localization, it is not difficult to understand the nuances of recovering deleted and lost files in this utility, since all operations are performed under the control step-by-step wizard. For example, in the simplest case - when recovering accidentally deleted files - you just need to activate the Undelete Recovery module, specify the device to be scanned (Fig. 2) and click the button Recover, after which the program will immediately display a list of found folders and files. In most modules, scanning can be quick or full, the latter takes more time but is also more effective. Folders and files found during the analysis are marked with icons in the form of a cross, a question or an exclamation mark - the cross serves to indicate accidentally deleted files, and other icons indicate lost data and RAW files, respectively (Fig. 3). Images and text files can be viewed directly from the utility before recovery.

Rice. 2. Run disk analysis for deleted files

Rice. 3. Presentation of scan results
in MiniTool Power Data Recovery

Auslogics File Recovery 3.3

Developer: Auslogics Software Pty Ltd

Distribution size: 3.69 MB

Work under control: Windows XP(SP2 and above)/2003/Vista/7/2008

Distribution method: shareware (15-day demo version that allows you to recover no more than ten files no larger than 100 KB in size - http://www.auslogics.com/ru/software/file-recovery/download/)

Price:$49.95 (in the Allsoft.ru store - 990 rubles)

Auslogics File Recovery (formerly Auslogics Emergency Recovery) is a program for recovering accidentally deleted files, as well as files lost due to viruses or system failures. Using this utility, you can recover documents, music, photos and any other files from hard drives, floppy drives, USB drives and flash memory cards. In this case, you can recover not only files accidentally deleted in the usual way, but also files lost during deletion of a disk partition or quick formatting. As additional functionality, the utility includes tools for guaranteed data deletion and creation of disk images.

Recovery in Auslogics File Recovery is carried out under the guidance of a wizard (Fig. 4) and does not require any effort from the user (it is enough to decide on the media, file types, analysis option and, if necessary, set restrictions on the search area). The program has two scanning options: normal and deep (it is very long) - with deep scanning, it is possible to recover files lost after a quick formatting of the disk. To speed up the scanning process, you can resort to limiting files by type, setting up an exception list that includes files and folders that will be ignored during scanning, etc. Files found during the search are displayed in the main program window, indicating the program’s “opinion” regarding their status ( Fig. 5). The structure and names of folders, as well as file names, are displayed unchanged even during a deep scan for lost data. You can preview files - pictures, photographs, videos, text and PDF documents.

Rice. 4. Configuring settings for searching for lost files
in Auslogics File Recovery

Rice. 5. Result of disk scanning by the program
Auslogics File Recovery

Handy Recovery 5.5

Developer: SoftLogica

Distribution size: 2 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98/NT/2000/Me/XP/2003/Vista/7

Distribution method: shareware (30-day demo version that allows you to recover one file per day - http://www.handyrecovery.com/download.shtml)

Price: 49 dollars, in the Softkey store - 950 rubles. (we are talking about the latest Russian-language version of Handy Recovery 4.0)

Handy Recovery is a convenient utility for recovering lost files. The program supports FAT12/16/32/64(ExFAT) and NTFS/NTFS 5 file systems and can recover data from a hard drive or other storage media, including CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MultiMedia and SecureDigital memory cards. The range of recoverable files covers a variety of formats: MS Office documents, archive files, email databases (Outlook and Eudora), photos, music and video files, etc. At the same time, you can recover not only accidentally deleted files (deleted from the recycle bin, deleted bypassing the recycle bin) , but also files damaged as a result of virus attacks and crashes, and files from deleted or formatted volumes. In addition to this, the utility provides the ability to create exact disk images for delayed recovery.

In Handy Recovery, the developers have implemented two scanning modes: standard (produced by analyzing file records and helps to recover deleted files if these records were not damaged) and extended, which allows you to find even data when the information in file records has been partially overwritten or damaged. Scanning in standard mode starts automatically immediately after starting the utility (Fig. 6); at the end of the process, a list of identified folders and files will be displayed in the program window; For convenience, lost files and folders are marked with a red cross (Fig. 7). For each file, the probability of its successful recovery is indicated. The contents of a number of files (Word and Excel documents, graphic and text files, archives) can be viewed before recovery in the preview window. As for advanced scanning, it is resorted to in cases where, after analyzing the disk, the files of interest were not found. With such scanning, you can search for strictly defined types of files (for example, images), lost file records, and also conduct a more thorough analysis of data deleted from the recycle bin (with a standard search, some of such data may not be found). The structure of the found folders and file names based on the scan results are displayed unchanged.

Rice. 6. Run disk analysis in Handy Recovery

Rice. 7. Display of data found during analysis
in Handy Recovery

Recuva 1.43

Developer: Piriform Ltd

Distribution size: 2.44 MB

Work under control: Windows 98/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7

Distribution method: commercialware (http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download)

Price: Business - $34.95; Home - $24.95; Free - free

Recuva is a very easy-to-use file recovery utility from the developers of popular solutions such as CCleaner and Defraggler. This tool allows you to recover photos, documents, music files, videos, etc. in FAT (including ExFAT) and NTFS file systems from hard drives, as well as from any rewritable media (flash drives, external hard drives, memory cards, etc.). Using this utility, you can recover accidentally deleted files, return files that were deleted as a result of system errors, crashes or virus attacks, and also try to recover files from formatted or damaged disks. Additionally, the program can be used to ensure guaranteed data deletion. In addition to the standard edition, the utility has a portable edition, which can be installed on a flash drive or external hard drive.

By default, the file recovery process is carried out under the guidance of a wizard (if desired, it is easy to disable the automatic launch of the wizard) - fig. 8; using the wizard allows you to narrow the search area, limiting yourself to only searching for images, music, documents, etc. The scan can be quick or deep. Deep scanning reveals large quantity files “buried” on the analyzed disk, but also takes much more time. If necessary, advanced users can switch to the advanced operating mode and fine-tune the search parameters - use a filter by file type to narrow the search area, enable folder structure restoration, etc. Upon completion of the scan, a list of deleted files is displayed in the main program window (Fig. 9 ); Each file found is marked in green, yellow or red (the color indicates the chances of recovery). In advanced mode, the program additionally shows details about the file, an image thumbnail, and an assessment of the quality of the restoration.

Rice. 8. Run disk analysis in Recuva

Rice. 9. Result of searching files via Recuva

Pandora Recovery 2.1.1

Developer: Pandora Corp.

Distribution size: 3.11 MB

Work under control: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista

Distribution method: freeware (http://www.pandorarecovery.com/download/)

Price: for free

Pandora Recovery is a simple utility for recovering files in a variety of formats: photos, music, videos, documents, etc. The program supports FAT16/32, NTFS, NTFS5 and NTFS/EFS file systems and allows you to recover data from local, network drives and flash drives. It is possible to recover accidentally deleted files, as well as lost ones (if the MFT record was repeatedly overwritten by the OS, the disk is formatted, the file allocation table is damaged or is missing). In addition to the free standard edition of the utility, there is a commercial portable edition of Pandora Mobile Recovery, distributed on 1 GB flash drives ($19.95 per disc). It does not require installation and can be launched directly from a USB drive.

File recovery, as a rule, is carried out under the guidance of a step-by-step wizard, and this process does not cause any difficulties, especially since the wizard starts automatically when the program is loaded. To start the search, you need to specify the disk and select the file search method (Fig. 10) - there are three options here: search for all deleted files, search for deleted files taking into account the file name, its size and date of creation/modification, or a full scan of the disk (Deep scan ). The latter option is used to search for data on disks with a corrupted file allocation table, recently formatted disks, etc. Unfortunately, with such a search, file names and paths are not restored, only certain types of files are detected (images of the most common formats, MS Office documents, MP3 files, PDF documents and ZIP archives), and the scanning itself takes much longer . Additionally, this method only works on unfragmented files. Found deleted and lost files are marked with red crosses, while the names of files with partially or completely overwritten clusters are displayed in red, the names of encrypted (EFS) files in green, and compressed files in blue (Fig. 11). In addition, the program provides an assessment of the success of recovery of detected data in the form of a percentage of overwrites: the higher the percentage, the less chance of successful recovery. Before recovery, you can view images of popular formats and text files.

Rice. 10. Run disk analysis in Pandora Recovery

Rice. 11. Result of searching files through Pandora Recovery

Testing utilities

It was very interesting to try in practice to evaluate various programs for recovering lost data in terms of scanning speed and the effectiveness of their identification of deleted and lost files, which is what we tried to do. To do this, all the utilities in question were installed on one of the hard drive partitions, and a 3.7 GB flash drive was allocated for the experiment. This flash drive was among the workers, and therefore contained certain information - in particular, a lot of distribution kits software, drivers, etc. In one of the driver folders there was a Chipset folder, which included six subfolders with numerous subfolders and 914 files with a total volume of 176 MB. It was this folder that was selected as one of the test folders (of course, the contents of the folder for further analysis and comparison were copied to the hard drive in advance).

After that, the flash drive was formatted in the FAT32 file system using the built-in Windows tools so that nothing was left on it. Then the Delete_files folder, previously prepared on the hard drive, was copied to the flash drive, including 50 files with a total volume of 66.8 MB. The files were in a variety of formats, including Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, ZIP, RAR and 7z archives, images (JPEG, TIFF, RAW, etc.), applications, music (MP3, WAV, MID), ISO images, SWF files, AVI videos, etc. Then all files from the Delete_files folder were deleted, bypassing the trash (Shift + Del). After that, we conducted the first experiment on information recovery using each of the software solutions. The results are presented in the table.

At the next stage, in order to complicate the task, five new files with a total volume of 78.4 MB were written to the root directory of the flash drive. Obviously, the last operation should have significantly worsened the recovery results (compare the volumes of deleted and newly written files - 66.8 and 78.4 MB), since there is a high probability that a considerable part of the clusters in which the deleted files were originally located ended up partially overwritten when copied with other data. Then we subjected the experimental media to analysis by each of the utilities discussed in the article to search for accidentally deleted files (the Delete_files folder), and then, to the extent possible, we tried to recover the deleted files. Finally, we conducted an experiment to identify lost files and folders (Chipset folder).

Based on the testing results, it is clear that any of the utilities discussed can be successfully used to recover newly deleted data. And it is equally obvious that the result of restoring such files after writing new information to disk with an impressive volume (that is, when some sectors were overwritten) is disappointing. All this only confirms the most important rule recovery: do not write anything to the media and generally stop any work with it immediately after the emergency.

As for recovering files and folders lost after formatting, the results are mixed. The MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free Edition and Handy Recovery programs coped with the task best, but using Recuva utilities for these purposes, and even more so Pandora Recovery, turned out to be problematic due to the lack of folder structure and file names in their scanning reports. In addition, in Pandora Recovery the situation is further aggravated by the fact that the list of formats supported during Deep scanning is quite limited. Although you shouldn’t discount these programs anyway - these are some of the best free software products in their class, which are very easy to use and do an excellent job of restoring “freshly deleted” files.

Conclusion

Gone are the days when you always had to turn to professionals to recover lost files and this undertaking cost a very large sum. Today, there are many fairly easy-to-use utilities on the market that allow you to return files that were accidentally deleted or lost as a result of a computer failure, virus attack, or other computer disaster. Some solutions are offered at affordable prices for home users or are free for non-commercial use. Therefore, in simple situations when it comes to accidental deletion or loss of files, for example, as a result of quick formatting, it makes sense to restore the data yourself. But if the cause of file loss is damage to the hard drive at a mechanical or electronic level, then you should not experiment - it is better to entrust the data recovery operation to professionals.

When restoring on your own, you should act wisely and take care in advance that such a cataclysm does not take you by surprise. In other words, you should keep it on hand (that is, on disk in established form) a couple of suitable utilities and, if possible, resort to data recovery as soon as possible in compliance with all mandatory rules (exclude the possibility of writing other data to the media, save recovered files to another media, etc.). In addition, if you fail with one utility, be sure to give another a chance - their media scanning algorithms differ, so it is possible that the second utility will be more successful. And finally, do not forget that not a single solution, even the most expensive and powerful one, guarantees absolute success, and therefore no one has canceled the backup of valuable data.

“I deleted an important file!” Stories with this beginning happen to users quite often. It is possible that some of our readers have already encountered a similar problem. Such stories always begin the same, but end differently. In this article I will tell you how to make the ending of this story happy. Or at least do everything to make the likelihood of a happy outcome higher.

1. What to do if an important file or folder is deleted?

Well first of all, don't panic. When you throw out garbage, you don’t immediately send it to a landfill. First a trash can, then a container, and only then a landfill. This happens in Windows too. Using the Del key, you first send the file to the Trash. Then, after emptying the recycle bin, the file can be found on disk in unused clusters for some time (this is an analogue of our container from the example). And only after the area on the disk in which there were still traces of the file is occupied by other data, then the file is hopelessly lost (this is already a landfill).

1.1 Search in the Cart

It may sound trivial, but the Recycle Bin is the first means of protecting data from accidental deletion. At the same time, many Windows users automatically clean it immediately after placing files in it. Although, by and large, the Recycle Bin does not need to be emptied at all, because it does it automatically.

Searching for files in it is not at all difficult. Find its icon on your desktop and open it. If the file name is known, then simply write it in the search box. You can also sort files in the Recycle Bin by deletion date and immediately find the file you need that was just deleted.

The next time you think about using some utility that cleans out the Recycle Bin in the background to free up disk space, think carefully about whether you should trust this important process to an automatic machine. It may be easier to do it yourself and at a time when you are sure that there is nothing valuable in it.

1.2 Searching among shadow copies

It is not necessary to use any paid programs for this purpose. The standard backup tool in Windows 7 is quite suitable and this system is turned on automatically when you install the operating system.

If “System Protection” is not disabled manually (which is often recommended by would-be optimizers), then restoring a deleted file from a shadow copy in Windows 7 is quite simple.

1. In Explorer, find the folder where the deleted file was (not the Recycle Bin).
2. Click on the name of this folder right mouse button and select " Properties»
3. Go to the " Previous versions"(see picture below).

It contains information about all versions of files that were in this folder at different times.

We select the closest one by date and try to search for our file in it. If it is not there, we turn to an earlier version. And so on until you find the desired file.

This way, you can not only recover an accidentally deleted file, but also return to one of the previous versions of a document that was changed and saved on disk, and then its previous version was needed.

Shadow copies of user files are created automatically by the operating system during reboots and installation of various programs at system restore points. Therefore, you don’t need to do anything separately to create them. The main thing is not to disable “System Protection,” since some “experts” recommend disabling it to save resources, keeping silent about the fact that the security of the system as a whole will decrease.

2. If standard remedies did not help

2.1 Use a third-party file recovery utility

You can use a specialized data recovery utility, which, after analyzing the disk, will display a list of files and folders that you can try to recover. One of these programs can be kept on disk in case of fire.

The chances that the file will be recovered without loss are not so great, but there can be luck. Here, a very important point that influences the “success of the concession” is the minimum number of disk operations from the moment the file is deleted. Some sources even tell us to urgently turn off the computer and boot from a flash drive or disk. To me, this is pure paranoia. Much easier to comply simple rules, which I will give below, and do not risk your nerves in vain.

I will immediately upset the happy owners of SSD drives - they do not have this chance of salvation! The fact is that the system for such disks regularly performs the TRIM function, which resets sectors with deleted files.

2.2 Don't forget about the professionals

There are people who can help with recovering deleted files on a disk. There is a chance of running into a charlatan or an inexperienced specialist, as in any other type of service. But if the file is really valuable, then it might make sense to pay professionals.

3. What can I do to prevent files from disappearing without a trace?

3.1 Do not disable standard protection measures - they are very effective

The operating system developers have come up with a multi-level protection system against problems associated with accidental data deletion. Do not neglect them and disable them, as well as empty the Recycle Bin every time immediately after deleting a document. Make sure that “System Protection” is activated and that the Recycle Bin is working properly. With these system components, you can lose a file irretrievably unless on purpose. To prevent data loss associated with disk failure, use the recommendations in the following paragraphs.

3.2 Use cloud storage

Despite the chance of information disclosure, synchronize your folder of important documents with cloud storage. I have not seen a user whose documents would take up 10 GB, which is how much cloud disks are willing to offer for free. They also offer their own applications that will synchronize your document folder with the cloud. For example, I use . But there are also such products as Google Drive, Yandex.Disk and, of course, the famous .

Yes, it is very important that cloud storages also have their own basket! Don't forget to look there too if your local copy of the file is irretrievably lost.

3.3 Make regular backups

If you have an operating system other than Windows 7, 8 or 10 installed, we advise you to make backup copies using a special utility.

Windows 7

Windows 7 has its own utility for backing up versions of important files, “Backup or Restore,” which is located in the “Control Panel.”

To create backup copies, you will need a separate hard drive (external or internal) that has enough free space to accommodate an image of the entire system disk, as well as to create backup copies of user files.

Windows 8/10

This version of the operating system has a more advanced feature called File History, which is turned off by default. If you have really important documents, take the trouble to enable version control for them. Just type “res” in the control panel search box, as shown in the picture.

Then, in the “File History” window, make the necessary settings. By default, the system suggests storing versions of all documents and drawings. If you have large folders with home photos in your documents, then it is better to make backup copies of them yourself, as I described in. And in “File History” it is better to place these folders in “excluded” folders.

Now you will have copies of the document for each change option. Your dissertation or graduate work will be safe. Even if you deleted an entire chapter by mistake and wrote down the document.

File History requires the use of a removable storage device. This is in case the main hard drive fails. So don’t spare money and buy a flash drive for a hundred or two rubles (for example, 8 GB), so that you don’t have to shell out a thousand or two later to restore files bit by bit from the body of a dead hard drive.

1. Hello admin, answer the question, how to recover deleted files and preferably a free program? It so happened that I accidentally deleted a folder with files that I really needed from my computer (from my desktop), and I emptied the recycle bin and now I can’t restore my files in any way. I tried several free data recovery programs, but they recovered almost nothing for me! All this looks like a simple deception, but I just lost time. They also write a lot on the Internet about the DMDE program, although they say that it is one of the best for recovering deleted files and is easy to use, but unfortunately I could not figure it out without your help; when restoring, an error constantly appears: Free Edition restores up to 4000 files from the current panel only. It would be great if you could give examples of file recovery using this program and help me understand it.
2. Hi all. I accidentally formatted an entire partition of my hard drive with all the files and then only realized that the partition I formatted was not the one I needed, naturally all the files were gone. Is it possible recover deleted files and what program should I use? I tried to use free data recovery utilities myself, but nothing worked. I want to try to use a paid program, but I just don’t know which one to choose and again I doubt whether it will help, most likely they will scam me out of money and that’s it. I read your article and now I’m thinking about stopping at it.
3. Please advise, the computer froze and I had to turn it off emergencyly. After turning it on, I discovered that all the partitions (F:), (H:), (J:) on the second terabyte hard drive were gone. In Disk Management all HDD is defined as unallocated space. What should I do now, restore the entire partition or restore only the necessary folders with files? Please recommend some programs.

How to recover deleted files

Hello friends, in this article we will recover deleted files using the free DMDE program, but it is not the only one of its kind, there are also (separate articles have been published) paid ones, R-Studio, .

I will answer the third letter as follows: (read a separate article), but please note, the site has very detailed articles on the topic of restoring deleted partitions, for example - “How to recover a deleted hard drive partition” or “Recovering a lost partition using a program”, and also programs.

The work we have ahead of us will be long and interesting, but before that I want to cheer you up and tell you one funny incident that happened at our work. A computer was brought to our organization on which a folder called “Project” was accidentally deleted from the desktop and urgently needed to be restored. Of course, important files should always be copied to at least a flash drive, but this was not done. The computer belonged to an engineer from a friendly organization and in this folder there were important documents that he had been working on for a month, the basket was empty. The worst thing is that the employee did not remember when the folder was deleted, maybe it happened even yesterday, but this morning until lunchtime he worked in the operating system, copied various files and could have completely erased the deleted folder.

Tried to look for the missing folder special program Several specialists preceded us and it was found, but the files in it could not be opened. In short, everything was tried and while people were trying to work magic on unreadable files in the Hex editor, I noticed that system recovery was enabled in the Windows 7 operating system and it worked great. Going to the C:\Users\Gocha folder, I right-clicked on the "Desktop" folder and selected "Properties"

and selected “Previous versions of files”, naturally several “Desktop” folders appeared to choose from, one version of the folder was created today by going to this folder

I discovered that it was missing - the “Project” folder, all I had to do was copy it to a flash drive and take it to my neighbors’ system administrators so they wouldn’t have to worry about it.

This is how friends also happen, and even very experienced people can forget about the basics. So if you come across a similar case, remember first simple means file recovery and the first thing you pay attention to is “ ” and “ “, don’t forget about them.

In the life of any person there are situations when the necessary files are deleted from the hard drive and he naturally urgently needs to restore them. My advice to you, if the files are extremely important, for example, a sensible (and not like before) plan economic development Russia for the next 15 years, then we turn off the computer (preferably emergency), grab the system unit and go to a data recovery service. It will be much easier for a professional to recover your files if no recovery attempts have been made by a non-professional before.

If you decide to recover deleted files yourself, then the first rule is not to restore them to the same hard drive where they were located. The ideal option is to connect your hard drive to another system unit and with another operating system on which data recovery programs are installed and restore files to another hard drive. If there is no other computer, restore deleted files to a portable hard drive or flash drive, or you can use these.

What programs can I use to recover deleted files?

The overwhelming number of users believe that there are a lot of such programs and all of them can really help you get back files accidentally deleted by the recycle bin or restore data on your hard drive after formatting it.

So, friends, I want to express to you my opinion, based on a little experience. There are so many programs that can really help in trouble that you can count them on the fingers of one hand, and if these programs don’t help you, then you definitely can’t do without specialists.
We will recover files for free using the following programs: DMDE, Recuva and the relatively recently introduced R.saver, and we will also recover files using paid programs EasyRecovery, GetDataBack for NTFS and R-Studio. How to recover deleted files using DMDE DMDE is a free program for searching and recovering deleted files on hard drives x and flash drives, it can also restore deleted partitions on a hard drive, it works without installation, you can carry it with you on a flash drive. The program has paid and free versions, but I can say that for home needs the capabilities of the free version are quite sufficient, now you will see everything for yourself.
And here is the official website of the DMDE program. Download the program, click GUI for Windows,

DMDE works without installation and is downloaded in an archive, unzip it and run the dmde.exe file. The DMDE program has detailed help on working with the program, be sure to read it. Attention! We work and don’t miss anything, I’ll give three examples of recovering deleted files, the first is very simple, so to speak, for warming up, the second is more complicated, and the third is quite difficult, but we can handle it!

Example of recovering deleted files No. 1

My system has two hard drives, the first is a Maxtor with a capacity of 250 GB with my operating system and the second Samsung hard drive belongs to my friend, the capacity is 120 GB, this disk contains two partitions, the first is (F:) with the operating system installed and the second partition under the letter (G:),

There were folders with files on it, and most importantly a folder called “Collection”, it contained films, photographs, documents. So, all the folders were accidentally deleted past the trash can. All this needs to be restored, especially the "Collection" folder

Immediately after launch, the DMDE program asks on which hard drive to restore the files. Select the second Samsung hard drive with the left mouse, then Logical Disks/Volumes on the right, a window appears in which we must select a drive letter. The drive we need is under the letter (G:), select it and click OK.

The DMDE program uses a special algorithm to search for deleted files and, in simple cases, is able to recover such files on the fly without an in-depth search. In this program window, double-click the left mouse on the section (G:) and go into it.

Double-click the left mouse to go to the section (All found + reconstruction),

A virtual reconstruction of the file system is in progress, or in simple words quickly search for deleted files.

That's all, our files along with the "Collection" folder were found and we did without an in-depth search (which we will use in the next more complex case).

The program found the folders, but now you also need to restore them, check the box for the desired folder and right-click on it, in the menu that appears click “Restore object”

We select in Explorer which folder we will restore deleted files into. I advise you not to save files to the drive from which you are restoring files, in our case (G:), it is better to save the data to a portable USB hard drive, having first created a folder on it. In my case there are not many files and I will save them directly to the desktop. OK.

And the error appears: "Free Edition recovers up to 4000 files from the current panel only"

All this is due to the fact that we are using the free version of the program and we will not be able to restore a folder or several folders with files at once, but it will be possible to restore all files in a folder. To restore, we need to enter any folder and check all the files. We enter the “Collection” folder and check all the files needed for recovery, right-click and select Recover files

In the Explorer window, select a location to save the recovered files, for example, directly to the desktop.

File recovery process

All files were perfectly restored, movies are played, photos are opened, documents are read.

Now let's look at the second example, more the hard way file recovery.

Example of recovering deleted files No. 2

To check the capabilities of the program again. On the familiar Samsung hard drive, I myself deleted all the files from the drive (G:) and then formatted it and copied it to it large group files and formatted again.

We will search for the same folders with videos, photos and the “Collection” folder. Let's launch our DMDE program. The program asks us which hard drive to restore files on. Select the second Samsung hard drive with the left mouse, then Logical Disks/Volumes on the right, a window appears in which we must select a drive letter. The drive we need is under the letter (G:), select it and click OK.

We try a quick search, click on the new volume (G:) twice with the left mouse.

Virtual file system reconstruction.

A quick search yielded nothing; no files reminiscent of the installed operating system were found. Therefore, we return to the “Disk Partitions” window,

highlight our " New volume(G:) and click the "NTFS Search" button

Attention: If your storage media is formatted in the FAT32 file system, then select the "Search FAT" button

The search for deleted files begins, lasting 20 minutes. In difficult cases, you need to wait until 100 percent of the scan is completed. Pay attention to the "Matches" column; it can be used to assess the quality of file recovery on the found volume. Double-click with the left mouse on the first section,

Click on the section (All found + reconstruction).

MFT reading error - ignore it.

As you can see, the advanced search has borne fruit, but the files found by the program are absolutely not the same. These files were located on this hard drive several years ago and at the moment we do not need them at all. I try to repeat the scan again, but the result is the same.

Friends, I have been using this program for a long time and in one case out of five you will be able to recover files after formatting, we were just unlucky today.

And finally, the third example, very difficult to restore, and the program partially coped with it.

Example of recovering deleted files No. 3

From our Samsung hard drive I deleted all files, then deleted all partitions, this is (F:) with the installed operating system and the second partition under the letter (G:). Then I formatted the hard drive and created one large new volume on it (H:) and copied a large group of files to it, then deleted them, and finally deleted the created new volume (H:). Of course, after this, it will be difficult for any program specializing in data recovery to recover files.

Note: under such circumstances, we can try to recover the deleted partitions entirely along with the files, but we will describe this process in the next article.

We need to restore a folder called “Collection” located on the disk (G:) before formatting. And I also want to restore a folder called “Archive” that was on the desktop, on the drive F:\Users\users\Desktop. Let me remind you that now, instead of our sections (F:) and (G:), there is simply unallocated space.
We launch the DMDE program, there are currently no partitions on the Samsung hard drive, so check the “Physical devices” item, select our Samsung hard drive and click OK.

There is a quick search for deleted partitions,

As you can see, the last found partition fits the size of the disk (F:) with the operating system, let's first try to look for the remote "Archive" folder on it. Double-click on it with the left mouse.

Click on the section (All found + reconstruction).

Virtual file system reconstruction.

The program did not find any files on the fly, go back, click on the “Disk Partitions” button,

select our found “New Volume” and launch a full search for deleted files, click the “NTFS Search” button

As I already said, the "Matches" column can be used to assess the quality of file recovery on the found volume. Let's wait for 100 percent scanning. The full scan took 30 minutes. Let's go to the first section

(All found + reconstruction)

And we see all the operating system files,

Go to the desktop C:\Users\users\Desktop

And we restore our “Archive” folder with all the files in it.

One inconvenient thing about the free version is that it is impossible to restore the entire folder at once; you have to go into the folders and select all the files, then restore them as a group.

Then I scanned all the found volumes and found many interesting files that ever existed on this hard drive, but unfortunately I could not find the “Collection” folder.
As you can see, our program almost coped with quite difficult case recovery of deleted files, and even after full formatting. So, in my opinion, the program deserves to be in your service.
If interested, read our next article “How to recover deleted files using the free program “Recuva” and “R.saver”

Losing data on a computer is a fairly common problem among PC users. There can be many reasons. From accidentally deleting files to PC system failure. You can find deleted files on your computer and restore them using the powerful Russian-language program PHOENIX. You do not need the help of a specialist; the program is easy to use. All you have to do is follow the instructions and perform the steps step by step.

1 step. Installing the program on a PC

To get started, you need to install it on the computer from which the files were deleted. PHOENIX supports operating system Windows of different versions and bit depths.

Step 2. Beginning of work

Launch the program on your PC. PHOENIX allows you to search and restore images, videos, various documents and even entire archives of files. To select a specific location to search for deleted files (in in this case this will be the PC’s local drive), click “Next”. At this step, select from the list the drive where the data was stored.

Window when starting the program

List of disks

Step 3. Setting search parameters

To speed up the search for lost data, you can check the boxes for specific formats in the following items: Images, Documents, Multimedia, Archives, Other. For example, if you need to restore photos, but you don’t know exactly what format they were in, check all the boxes in the “Images” item. You can also specify the size of the files you are looking for. The program presents several ranges, but you can specify your own values. Next, you need to click on “Scan”.

Selecting options for disk scanning

Step 4 Selecting files to recover

Wait for the program to search on the drive you selected and with the parameters that you specified in the previous step. As a result, a list of found files will be generated. All files in the list are marked with check marks, that is, all this data will be restored to your PC. To restore deleted files selectively, just uncheck unnecessary files.

PHOENIX allows you to sort files by name, by format, by size. If there are too many files, then in the “Filtering” item you can specify, for example, only images or only documents.

The program allows you to view detailed information about each found file. To do this, you need to open the list of deleted files, select one of the files, and then click on the “View” button. In the window that opens, you will find not only information about the file, but also see the likelihood of its recovery. There is also a “Recover Now” function, which allows you to restore files individually.

Step 5 Recovery

With the PHOENIX program, you can not only recover deleted files, but also burn them directly to disk (CD or DVD) or send them via ftp (that is, the data will be transferred to an ftp server). To get deleted files back to your computer, select “Recover and save to folder.” Point to any folder on your PC and wait for recovery.

Ready! The files have been returned to their original location. Now you know how to recover lost data from your computer using the convenient PHOENIX program. This software also allows you to recover deleted files from cameras, phones, tablets, and USB flash drives.

When an important file is lost, a document you spent a week on is erased, and photos disappear from a suddenly formatted memory card, there is no need to worry ahead of time. When you delete a file from the disk, its description in the system is erased. The set of bytes that made up the file remains in place until something else is written on top of them. So you can try to recover your data using any of these applications.

Be careful if you install applications on a drive where deleted files were located. There is a risk that application files will be overwritten during installation. It is better to select another partition or physical disk for installation.

Platform: Windows.
Price: free, $19.95 for premium version.

Recuva can recover data lost by mistake, for example from an accidentally emptied Recycle Bin. The program can return photos from an accidentally formatted memory card in the camera or music from an empty MP3 player. Any media is supported, even iPod memory.

Platform: Windows, Mac.
Price: free, $89 for premium version.

Disk Drill is a data recovery application for Mac, but there is also a version for Windows. This program supports most types of disks, files and file systems. With its help, you can restore erased files using the Recovery Protection function, as well as find and clean up the disk. However, the free version does not allow you to recover files lost before installing Disk Drill.

Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, SunOS, DOS.
Price: for free.

A very functional and versatile open source application. It has a text interface, but it is not difficult to understand.

TestDisk supports great amount file formats. In addition, the program can be burned to a LiveCD to recover data from a disk on which the system does not boot. The utility can recover a damaged boot sector or lost data.

TestDisk comes with the PhotoRec program, which recovers erased files, photos, music and videos.

4. R-Undelete

Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux.
Price: the free version recovers files up to 256 KB in size; $79.99 for full version.

R-Undelete is part of R-Studio. This is a whole family of powerful data recovery programs. Supported file systems are FAT12/16/32/exFAT, NTFS, NTFS5, HFS/HFS+, UFS1/UFS2 and Ext2/Ext3/Ext4.

R-Studio applications can recover deleted data both on local drives and over the network. In addition to data recovery, the utilities provide tools for advanced partition copying and searching for bad blocks on disks.

Platform: Windows.
Price: free in trial mode with recovery of up to 1 GB of data; $69.95 for full version.

Eassos Recovery recovers deleted files, photos, text documents and more than 550 file formats. The application has a very simple and intuitive interface.

Platform: Windows.
Price: the free version does not save found files; $37.95 for full version.

Developer Hetman provides a set of recovery utilities various types data: entire sections or individual photographs and documents. The program supports all hard drives, flash cards, SD and microSD.

Platform: Windows.
Price: free, $19.97 included with Glary Utilities.

Glary Undelete can recover any deleted files, including compressed, fragmented or encrypted ones. Filtering of recovered data is supported.

Do you know more convenient and functional data recovery applications? Tell us about them in the comments.