Restoring deleted files?

[juneybean]

My brother has deleted a folder full of files I had saved on his PC until I had bought a new one.

Is there any way to try and get them back?

Check the recycle bin - you'll see an icon on the desktop. Should be in there. Just click on them and select restore.

No he completely deleted them.

But I had heard of software restoring them because they're never fully deleted or something :S but I don't want to download anything that'll break my computer.

Thanks for replying :)

Ah so he emptied the recycle bin too

If you google, you should find software and you should be able to get a free trial download to save you paying for anything. I've not actually used any so not sure what would be good or not.

You can get software to restore the files, though I can't recommend any piece in particular.

What you can do to help immediately is to make sure that your brother uses his computer as little as possible until you can get and run that software. The more it's used the higher chance that there is that the computer will re-use that "empty" space on the disk, and if that happens getting the files back becomes incredibly difficult.

The upside is the pc I transferred my files from is standing unused so I think that'll be my best bet of restoring anything.

Thanks for your replies.

There are lots of data recovery utilities out there. In my limited experience, photorec was the most successful when I was recovering data from flash memory cards.

For anyone else transferring files between PCs or just backing up, storing backups on something that can't easily be erased, like a DVD-ROM can avoid some nasty situations.

Did you delete the files on the old PC as well? If you did then your best bet is to avoid running it and installing anything on it, take the disk out and out it in another PC as a second disk, ideally making it read only. Then run your data recovery programs from the first disk. Otherwise everything you install onto the disk increases the risk of overwriting the data you are trying to recover.

Depending on the value of what's on there, you might even consider paying a professional data recovery firm?

It's mostly emotionally valuable, old pictures and videos I had created years ago.

If I remember correctly, the old PC had two hard drives, and most of the stuff was deleted from the 2nd drive, so I could probably install on the C drive if need be.

The most upsetting thing is he has no remorse and is blaming me :(

Okay I shall try to remember this. Go to My Computer and scroll down until you find

C drive

Windows

'Temp files' in Word docs

everything that has ever been stored should be in there - it is a separate file. Even survives delete.

Good luck

Thanks suncottage, I'll give that a go when I get the PC :)

This is the file recovery utility I would try first. www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

"everything that has ever been stored should be in there - it is a separate file. Even survives delete."

You might find some word files in your temporary folders, Word is a bit messy when it comes to leaving things lying around, but you won't find "everything that has ever been stored" in there.

Thanks Badgerpaws

I was trying to remember what our IT manager did one day - it was stored in something called temp files and he brought up EVERYTHING I had ever stored or looked at. It was a very looong list and involved things like

Menstrual cramps
Mumsnet
Daily Mail

then it got worse

What did he look at? It was on the C drive and marked 'Temp' files

"What did he look at? It was on the C drive and marked 'Temp' files"

It could have been the cache for your web browser. It will hold things like the files from web sites that you visit (with the name of the web site) and documents that you downloaded off of the internet.

I RECENTLY USED A FREE PROGRAMME CALLED RECUVA TO GET BACK SOME PHOTOS DELETED OFF MY CAMERA SD CARD. IT WAS VERY EASY TO USE & I THINK YOU CAN USE IT TO GET BACK MOST TYPES OF DELETED STUFF

When I tried Recuva it seemed to retrieve a lot of files, but files which should have been 5MB came out at 1.5MB. Photorec got the whole files back, not just bits of the files.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Most operating systems these days have a backup facility supplied (this on Windows 7, Time Machine on OSX) and external disk drives are fifty quid. Plug one in. Set it up. Stop worrying.