Recover deleted files, even if you deleted them from the recycle bin

Have you ever deleted some files that you did not wish to and wanted to recover it but did not find it in the recycle bin? You probably deleted it permanently with Shift+Delete or emptied the Recycle Bin. Now what? Don't worry, you may still have a chance to get it back. This article lists some free software that can recover deleted files from your hard drive or any other storage device instantly.

Then where do the files go?

 The answer is that when files are deleted, Windows does not delete them from your hard disk. It marks the storage space as empty for new data to be written and deletes the index entry that tells the location of those files. Unless, new files are written on that space, the deleted files are still recoverable. That's what allows these software to recover deleted files. They just modify the data attached by Windows to deleted files to say these are 'regular' files.

There are many free softwares that allow users to do this. Some of them are:

Pandora Recovery - It is a free software that offers a wizard based interface for recovering files. It allows you to browse a drive's individual folders to look for deleted files.

TOKIWA DataRecovery - It is the smallest file recovery program in the market (about 200 kb). It supports undeletion from FAT 12, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS file systems. It also supports recovering NTFS compressed and EFS encrypted files.

Recuva - It offers a wizard based interface to unerase files. Recuva offers scanning deleted files based on their type (music, pictures, videos etc.). It also allows deep scanning in case a file you deleted is unrecoverable via normal search.

All of these recovery software support recovery from memory sticks, digital camera cards and MP3 players. They support undeleting all types of pictures, software, movies and documents from both FAT and NTFS formatted drives . They work on Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Some important tips to increase the chances of getting your deleted files back:-

When a file is deleted accidentally on a storage device, make sure that you don't do anything on it as doing that would increase the chances of new data being written over your deleted files; which would make file recovery impossible.

If you have deleted files on your main computer (the one you are using right now), do not browse the internet, download new software or shut it down. Keep it running and go to another computer, download one of the software mentioned above that is portable and save it on a flash drive. Then plugin the flash drive in your current system and perform file recovery. Regardless of whether you accidentally delete files a lot or not, make sure to always have that software in your flash drive in case you accidentally delete important files.

If one software fails to recover your deleted file, it does not mean that another one wouldn't recover it too.
so dont lose hope and try another software.