How to recover deleted files for free: find lost photos, documents, folders and more - recover lost
How to recover deleted files, and for free. We help you find lost photos, recover lost documents, unlock lost folders and more. The complete guide to recovering lost data for free. Where are your lost files? Read on to find out
How to recover deleted files, and for free. We help you find lost photos, recover lost documents, unlock lost folders and more. The complete guide to recovering lost data for free. Where are your lost files? Read on to find out.
Deleting files by accident is extremely easy to do. It's a sickening feeling when you realise what you've done. Fortunately, you might be able to get them back without spending any money using the free Disk Digger utility. Here's how to recover deleted files. Find lost photos and documents, for free.
How to recover deleted files for free: Look in the bin
The first thing you should do is check the obvious places in which a file may still reside. Sometimes you'll find they're still there in Windows' Recycle Bin - so double click the dustbin on your PC's desktop to have a look. If the file is there, you can drag and drop it on to the desktop to recover. But there are occasions when you've emptied it too hastily, or perhaps you're overly fond of the Shift-Delete shortcut which bypasses the Recycle Bin and actually deletes the data.
It is still worth checking other avenues. Have you shared the file or document via email?
Fear not, though, as Disk Digger is a free tool which you can use to recover files. You need to act fast and save the files to another physical disk.
How to recover files you deleted by accident
Step 1 Download DiskDigger (download here). You don’t need to install it – just extract the contents of the .zip archive and run the .exe file. Remember that if you’ve already accidentally deleted some files, you shouldn’t download DiskDigger to the disk containing your lost files as it could overwrite your files and make it impossible to recover them. Ideally, download it before you actually need it. (Note that there are many free data recovery utilities. You don't have to use DiskDigger, but we've seen good results from it.)
Step 2 Start DiskDigger. The opening screen shows all the disks so select the one containing your deleted files and click on ‘Next’ three times. The disk will now be scanned and any deleted files will be listed – this could take some time. If your missing files are listed, continue to the next step. If not you could try altering some of the options in the earlier screens.
Step 3 DiskDigger won’t be able to show correct filenames so, to help identify lost files, a preview option is provided. Select a file in the list at the left and choose either the ‘Preview’ (for photos) or the ‘First few bytes’ tag. Also useful for photographs is the ‘Thumbnail’ option in the ‘View’ menu which will show small images in the list.
Step 4 When you’ve identified your lost file(s) select them in the list at the left and click on ‘Recover selected files…’. Next select the device and folder where you want your files to be restored to (this must not be on the same physical drive as the lost file) and click on OK. The missing file(s) will be saved with automatically generated filenames, so you’ll need to rename them to their original names or something meaningful.
How to repair an external hard drive
If you think your external hard drive is faulty and you need to recover data from it then you might be out of luck.
Hard drive failures are generally non-repairable, although there might be more chance of recovery from an SSD than a traditional mechanical hard disk. With a mechanical hard disk, listen out for regular ticking sounds (different from the usual sounds your drive makes), or a chirping noise. These usually indicate a failure. If the drive is constantly spinning up and down, it might be because it can't get enough power from a single USB port, so try and Y cable and connect it to two USB ports.
In the case of failure, repairs would have to be carried out by a professional using special tools and software. Companies such as Kroll Ontrack will charge several hundred pounds to attempt to recover important data, and there are no guarantees they will be able to. It's usually only worth spending this sort of money if the files are that valuable to you.
One issue that might be repairable for free is when the partition table becomes corrupt, and Windows is unable to read any files from the drive. You can try using TestDisk (download here) to repair the table and recover your data.
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/software/how-recover-deleted-files-free-3365461/
