How to recover my files. How to recover deleted files from hard drive or flash drive

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

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

Platform: Windows.
Price: free, $19.95 for the extended version.

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

Platform: Windows, Mac.
Price: free, $89 for the extended 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 recover deleted files due to the Recovery Protection function, as well as find and clean 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: is free.

A very functional and versatile open source application. It has a text interface, but it's easy to understand.

TestDisk supports a huge number of file formats. In addition, the program can be written to a LiveCD to recover data from a disk that does not boot the system. The utility can recover a damaged boot sector or lost data.

TestDisk comes with PhotoRec, which recovers deleted 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 the full version.

R-Undelete is part of R-Studio. This is a whole family of powerful data recovery software. 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 up to 1 GB of data; $69.95 for the 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 the full version.

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

Platform: Windows.
Price: free, $19.97 as part of 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.

Any computer owner may inadvertently remove from hard drive important files. In this case, a natural question arises: "How to restore deleted files on the computer by yourself?

As a rule, all deleted documents are placed and stored in the recycle bin until the owner empties it himself. Therefore, you must first look for files there. As you know, you can restore them from the trash in one click, while they will be sent to the same place where they were before deletion.

If a necessary documents is no longer there, that does not mean that they are gone forever. In some cases, information can be recovered.

How to recover deleted files on a computer after emptying the recycle bin? You should be aware that immediately after deleting a document, only its name in the registry disappears, and the file itself will be stored on the hard drive until it is written in its place. new information. After realizing that important documents were in the basket that was just emptied, it is important not to save any information on the computer that could take the place of files deleted by carelessness.

Recovering information from the HDD is carried out using third party programs, so it is advisable to install such a program in advance, otherwise, when downloading, it may force out the files that you want to find and save. In this case, you can transfer HDD to another computer where such a program already exists, but this option is not always available.

There are many programs for recovering files from HDD, among which there are both free and paid services. The latter are more functional and provide more options.

How to recover deleted files on computer for free? To do this, you need to download the Recuva utility from the Internet. it handy application with a simple and intuitive interface that even a beginner can master. With the help of the utility it is possible to video, text documents.

Once the program is downloaded from the web, it must be unzipped and then installed and configured using the Recuva wizard. After that, you can proceed to the main actions.

How to recover deleted files on a computer using the free Recuva utility? After the installation wizard finishes its work, you must click the "Start" button and start searching for the necessary files. After the search process is completed, a list of files will appear. On some of them will be the inscription "Viewing is not possible." This means that other information has already been recorded on top of these documents and they cannot be restored.

Files that can still be saved should be ticked and click "Restore". After that, you will need to specify the folder in which you want to save the documents, and confirm by clicking "OK".

You can restore files in Recuva in a different mode. To do this, click on the "Go to advanced mode" button. A window will open in which the found files will be arranged in a table. The contents of the document can be seen in the "View" tab, the parameters - in the "Summary" section. For you need to mark them with checkboxes and start the process. The information will be saved to the specified folder.

Of course, the program will not be able to save all deleted files, so it makes sense to store especially important information on removable media.

Accidental pressing of the "Delete" button, inattention, program failure, unsuccessful mouse click, virus activity - all this can cause information loss. Files can be easily deleted unintentionally on a hard drive, flash drive, CD and DVD discs, on any other media. If it is very valuable, then it is worth fighting for its restoration. Most often successful.

Start with the trivial - look in the "Basket". It is highly likely that you will find accidentally destroyed data there. Without succumbing to panic, open the "Basket". This folder stores all deleted information until it is completely cleared. Restoring from it is simple: open the "Recycle Bin", right-click on the desired file (folder), select "Restore" from the list of commands. The file will return to its place where it was deleted. In more complex situations, when the file is not in the Recycle Bin, you will need to resort to the help of special programs. There are a lot of them. Consider the work of the most popular and proven. These include - Recuva. The utility easily copes with the return of lost files of any type: document, picture, spreadsheet - almost everything deleted.


Recuva will help you more effectively if you start recovering losses as quickly as possible. When working with a disk, a new file can be written to the place of the lost file, and then the chance of its return is almost zero. Start by downloading the utility, stopping working with disks. The program is free, small volume, for home use. Its interface is intuitive, even a novice user can handle it. Displays all deleted files after scanning the disk. Their status displays the probability of recovery.


RS File Recovery saves files even on a formatted drive. It doesn't matter if the disk partition was formatted NTFS, FAT or the file was just deleted. The interface is simple, files can be returned on any disk or memory card. The "Explorer" of the program displays the contents of the disk in a similar way to Windows. Select the desired disk by double-clicking the mouse, set the scan command. After completing the analysis of the disk, the program will display all the information on it, marking the deleted one with a red cross. Set the "Restore" command for the necessary files. Specify a place for them on another disk. The program is paid. It is possible to recover even long-deleted files using the R-Studio program. It is represented by a set of useful utilities that will restore files on any media. Files can be returned in most cases from the cleaned "Recycle Bin", deleted outside the "Recycle Bin", as a result of a virus attack, a computer power failure. It is possible to recover information even after formatting the disk to another system. The PC INSPECTOR File Recovery program will provide invaluable assistance in recovering lost information on damaged disks, memory cards, flash drives. Although it does not provide 100% recovery, it works well. Most importantly, install it not on the disk where you want to find lost files, but on any other independent medium. If you do not want to download and install programs, then try to use the internal tools of Windows - look for files in the archives. Windows creates "shadow copies" of files. This means that while working with documents, copies of files are automatically created and saved in special folders as part of the system restore point. Follow the steps: "Start" - "Control Panel" - "System and Maintenance" - "Backup and Restore". Click the Restore My Files command. The wizard will then indicate your next steps. In Windows 8 - "File History".


Always restore files using programs to a different drive, and not to the one where they were previously. The main thing is to act deliberately, without panic, but quickly. When working with important information, be careful and attentive, do not forget to create backup copies of files periodically.

Situations when users accidentally permanently deleted some necessary file or formatted a flash drive with important information occur quite often. But you should not despair in these cases. After all, something was erased from the disk, physically this data is still stored. The main thing is that they are not overwritten. There are several ways to effectively recover data, both on HDD and Flash-drive. We will consider the most effective.

Recovering information from a hard drive using standard Windows tools

First of all, make sure that the items you are looking for are not in the Trash. If they are there, then all you need is to right-click on the file and select "Restore".

If you did not find the file you are interested in in the Recycle Bin, you should try the following method. Click Start => Control Panel => System and Maintenance => Backup and Restore. Next, select the "Restore system settings or computer" command and follow the prompts of the wizard.

The second option is to click on the Computer component and select the drive or folder where the deleted files were stored. right-click on this object and click "Restore Previous Version". In this box, you will see a list of previous versions of the drive or folder. It will contain the files included in the backup. Here you will also have access to points for their backup.

Recovering data from a hard drive using special utilities

To recover data from a hard drive, go to the "Start" menu and select "Computer". Next, find the drive or folder where the deleted data you were interested in was stored. Right-click on the drive or folder and select Restore Previous Version. After that, a list of files will appear, including those that you are looking for (saved in backup). Double-click on the object you are looking for and select a version (for example, if you deleted a folder today, select yesterday), and then drag the recovered file (folder) to another location.

Recuva, for example, after launching, prompts you to specify the type of files that need to be found and restored, as well as the place where they were located. After that, scanning will begin - found files that can be completely returned are highlighted in green. The next step is restoration. When scanning, we recommend setting "Deep analysis".

  1. Data recovery from a flash drive

It is also possible to recover deleted files on a USB drive. But before using the applications, scan the drive with an antivirus. You can do this with or . The point is that some malware can provoke data hiding - they will not be displayed.

If it turned out that the information on the USB drive was nevertheless deleted, you can reanimate it with the tools, Easy Drive Data Recovery or.
When specifying the location where you want to find the data sent to the unknown, select "Removable disk" ("Memory card", "Specified location"). Note that some data can only be partially recovered. During the analysis, Recuva marks what is in doubt in yellow or red (as opposed to those that will be restored 100% - they are marked in green).

There is a high probability of "returning everything back to normal" if you did not save anything to the Flash drive after you deleted something there. The disadvantages of free programs that provide recovery of deleted files are either a limitation in the period of use or a limitation in functionality (support for different file systems and different formats of the files you are looking for is of decisive importance here). Compare utilities from different manufacturers you can in the selection.

Hi all! Probably many of you, more than once found yourself in a pretty unpleasant situation when someone or you yourself, by mistake, deleted the necessary files on your computer or laptop. In this situation, all users have the same question in their heads: “How to recover deleted files?”. I will tell you right away that if you suddenly did not see the file you need in the usual place, then you should not panic and get upset. Perhaps not everything is so bad and lost data can be easily returned. And we will consider in detail how to do this.

As I said above, do not panic if you suddenly did not find the files you need. Perhaps it will be quite easy to restore them using standard tools, since not all files are permanently deleted from the computer, which means there are Great chance find them and return them to disk, for this we will consider two methods that I will describe below.

How to recover deleted files from recycle bin.

This method is the simplest and most harmless. By default, all files that the user deletes from the hard drive go to temporary storage - the "Recycle Bin". In fact, this is a special folder that stores files deleted by the user. If you didn't change Windows settings, then look for your files in the trash.

To restore files from the trash, it will be enough to select the necessary ones. In the window, go to the "Management" tab and click on the "Restore selected objects" button.

If you want to return all the files in the trash to their place, then click the "Restore all objects" button.

Note! Large files, usually movies, folders with games, disk images are deleted without being placed in the recycle bin, as in most cases they exceed the allowable amount that is allocated for it. This makes recovering large files a rather problematic and sometimes impossible task.

As a rule, newbies, out of inexperience, often remove various program shortcuts from the desktop that, in their opinion, they do not need. But many do not know that by removing the shortcut, the program itself will still remain on your computer's hard drive.

To restore program shortcuts, you can do the following:


I want to draw your attention to the fact that when using the system restore tool, you will not be able to restore deleted files, programs or games, but you will be able to return program shortcuts, as well as system settings that were before the changes were made. Let's look at an example of how to perform a recovery Windows systems 7 and get back the deleted files.

We use the system restore function.

To use the system restore function, do the following:


In most cases, System Restore is useless, but sometimes you can use it to restore deleted shortcuts and system files and folders.

How to recover deleted files using third-party programs.

As a rule, standard tools for recovering deleted files do not bring the desired result, and users have to resort to third-party utilities that can recover lost data.

PhotoRec - get back deleted files.

If you still do not know how to recover deleted files, then a free, but quite functional utility called PhotoRec will come to the rescue. Judging by the name, the program should be able to restore photos, but its functionality allows you to work with many . Also, another plus of this utility is that it does not require installation and is distributed in an archive that is enough to unpack and run the executable file. This allows you to run the program from external media.

You can download the program from the official website of the developer - www.cgsecurity.org

After downloading, unpack the archive to any location and run the utility. The algorithm for working with the program is as follows:

  1. In the main window of the program, we will see disks that we can work with. Therefore, select the desired disk;

Note! The program can work with disk images in img format.


To start the program, click the "Search" button and wait for the end of the test results. As a rule, you should not hope for a 100% result, but with the help of this utility there is a high probability of recovering lost files: photos, documents, audio recordings. If the result does not satisfy you, then let's consider another program.

How to recover deleted files with Recuva

Another one free utility, which can recover deleted files. You can also download it from the developers' website - recuva.su/download.

The program has a Russian-language interface, so any user can work with it.

Note! Install the program on the partition of the hard drive where you do not need to restore files.

The principle of working with the program is as follows:


After the program scans, you will be shown all the detected files, which you will need to tick off and click on the "Restore" button. With the help of this program, in most cases, photos, documents and other light files stored on the hard drive are recovered.

DMDE is a powerful file recovery tool.

Another free utility that has great potential and can most likely recover deleted files from a hard drive or flash drive. The program does not require installation, so you can always have it at hand if you carry it on a flash card or portable HDD. As usual, the utility is available from the official website of the developers - dmde.ru. Therefore, we do not waste time and download the archive with the program.

The program interface is intuitive, but for beginners there is detailed guide, how to recover deleted files, which I recommend that you familiarize yourself with before starting work.

I will not describe in detail the entire process of the program in this article, since it is similar to the previous options. Let me just say that the program does an excellent job with its task and sometimes restores files even in completely hopeless situations.

Let's summarize.