How to recover deleted files
If you’ve deleted your files and emptied the recycle bin by mistake or lost an important file due to a corrupted partition, then don’t worry. Maybe they are not completely deleted. There are several rules that must follow if you want to get your files back.
First of all stop your work on the computer and install some software for file recovering as soon as you can. There are many programs in the Internet but I suggest you to use one of the following:
Note: Don’t format or defragment the hard drive!
It is bad idea to create or copy new files or to install new programs (except the programs for recovering) on the hard drive that contains deleted files.
When you delete file from your computer, its content isn’t immediately deleted. Windows just mark the space that your file occupies on the hard drive as free space which means that this space is ready for re-using. The file is still there but if your hard drive is pretty full and Windows needs space for writing new data your file is likely to be deleted soon. The chances of a perfect undelete decrease the longer you leave it. That’s why it is important for you to stop working on this computer and begin to recover files immediately.
Many people think that the System Restore feature of Windows can be used to recover deleted files but it doesn’t help because System Restore was developed specifically to restore only system files back to an earlier state. It is a good tool to roll your system back to a point in time when everything worked ok.
Recovering of deleted files is not so hard if your computer works normally but if it doesn’t boots (for example: due to a deleted partition while installing Windows) you will have to get the hard drive into a bootable computer. After that use some of the programs mentioned above to recover files from this drive.
Other method which can help ( if it’s impossible to move the hard drive into a bootable computer) is to use Live CD like KNOPPIX but you need normally working partition on the same or other drive where to store the recovered files.
More easy way is to use Live USB with Persistent feature which allows you to create a Persistent image on the flash drive where the recovered files can be stored . More information about Live USBs is available here.
These are some of the most used methods. Ofcourse there are many more but I think the best way for recovering is to store your important files on CD.