Retrieving deleted files

[NadJ]

Most undelete tools are pretty useless if they are installed and run a few days after the deletion.

[ferret]

Hope not too late - might be though!

Depending on how full your hard drive is it could be too late if the files were deleted a while ago. Even if you have a fair amount of free space on the drive if the files are really important my advice would be:

Turn off the PC now!

Windows writes to the disk all the time and deleted files do not really die until the space they occupied is overwritten, the fuller your PC the faster they are gone for good.

Once PC is off take out the hard drive and plug it in as a secondary drive on another PC and use software, not tried the free one just posted but have tried a few over the years and the one that recovered files that others would not was:


Not bad for £20 or so if the free one does not work.

Now might be a good time to review your local backup and archive procedures

[wol]

This util will do the trick for you....
http://www.undelete-plus.com/
Its freeware and doesnt contain any nasties.

[sli_gryn]

what's your unix skills like? i've found "deleted" windows files by using a linux livecd (damn-small-linux is a good one, google it) and connecting to the windows drive, having a sniff, and copying to a thumb drive.

might be worth a shot?

[Sockpuppet]

Lots of software on the net. Not sure how good it is though.

[SandyDown]

Had some really important files that were deleted most likely by accident - not sure when they were deleted, anyone knows best way to retrieve them, they are not in my recycle bin, I suspected my anti virus, but can't see any of the files in the vault.