Utilities for recovering accidentally deleted and lost files. How to find files and folders on your computer? How to find a lost file in windows 7
A very pressing question for many users is how to recover a damaged Word document, or how to recover a lost document. I think everyone has had such a problem as losing a document. For example, you were typing something important in the program, a crash occurred, Microsoft Word crashed (closed), and after opening you find nothing, or the document does not open at all. To prevent this from happening in the future, I have prepared an article where I will show what you can use to restore a damaged version of a document.
How to recover a damaged Word document?
Let's say you tried to run a document file and saw the following error message.
This error already contains several recommendations from which you can understand what to do, for example, make sure that there is enough disk space, whether you have permission to use the document and edit it.
In this case, we can return the document using Word itself. Just open the icon of this program so that Word starts, and then go to the item on the left "Open" and select "Review".
In the Explorer that opens, look for the document you want to open, click on it once so that its name appears in the field "File name". Next, you select the item from the drop-down menu "Recover text from any file" and click “Open”.
If the document is very large and you have used many design styles, it is not always successfully restored. Sometimes part of the text disappears, or there is text, but without formatting styles. The main thing, of course, is to restore the integrity of the document.
How to recover a Word document [Second method]
From what has been said above, it is clear that the first method does not always help, although it is worth using it. Let's move on to the next method.
Open Microsoft Word again and go to the File menu, then “Open” and the button "Review". Find the damaged document and click on it. Then click on the arrow where the “Open” button is and select the option there "Open and restore".
How to restore a Word backup?
Sometimes a file may get lost and you cannot find it anywhere. In this case, the program usually creates backup copies of the document; to open it, you need to proceed as follows:
Open Word and go to the “Open” section, then click on “Browse”. Remember where you saved the document and go to that folder. In the pop-up tab, select "All files", look for the lost document. Focus on the name and date. Sometimes such a document may be called “Backup copy...”.
If you fail, you can go another way. Open the search field in Windows and enter the extension of the Word backup file - *.wbk. It is more likely that such a file will be opened, but the point is that there may be more than one and the names may not match, so you will have to open and look at each one.
Autosave in Word, or how to restore a saved copy of a document
Typically, the program automatically creates backup copies of the document after a certain period of time. They are usually found along the following path: C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word.
Autosaved document names can begin with the word "Autocopy...", and the format of such files will be *.asd. To open such a file, you need to double-click on it.
Bonus option – Word file recovery program
I myself have never been interested in third-party Word recovery programs, but they can help if none of the above methods worked. As an example, I can cite the Hetman Office Recovery program. The utility, unfortunately, is paid; perhaps there are analogues, which I will include in this article. To use Hetman Office Recovery, just install it on your computer and check the disk for lost and damaged documents.
The program will find documents and show them in its window with real names. If you want to restore something, you select them with ticks, then it’s a matter of little things.
(for example, when deleting files from Windows Explorer, you pressed the Shift+Del keys). Chances are that the files are still on the hard drive - you just need to find them.
To successfully recover lost files, you need to follow some steps. Don't despair - you don't have to be an IT expert to do this, and you also don't have to pay hundreds of dollars to a specialist to recover your information. The R-Undelete utility is intended primarily for novice users. It uses the same technologies as our professional data recovery utility R-Studio, while its user interface is quite user-friendly and easy to use, making the program an ideal solution for most users when recovering deleted files.
But before you download R-Undelete (or any other file recovery utility), it is imperative that you understand and adhere to a few important rules:
First of all
First of all, you need to minimize the information stored on your computer's disk. To understand why this is needed, let's consider what happens when files are deleted - both accidental and intentional. In reality, Windows does not immediately delete data. When data is deleted, the disk sectors where they were located are marked as “deleted” and become available for recording information by other applications (programs). Therefore, all your data, including information about file names, can partially or completely remain on the disk, and therefore can be recovered.
However, there is always a chance that Windows will need this disk space to write new data. And if the sectors where the “deleted” data was located are overwritten, then it will no longer be possible to restore them.
Therefore: the sooner you start the data recovery process, and the less data is written to the disk, the higher your chances of recovering .
So our main recommendation is this: do not use the computer on which the lost files were located. If you are downloading something to the system drive, then cancel the download. Do not run programs, create (save) any files, or use the Internet until you have recovered the data. If possible, do not even turn off or restart the computer, since Windows constantly writes information to the system disk during the process of turning on/off the computer.
Leave your computer on but don't use it. If you have another computer, then use it - download the R-Undelete utility onto it and copy it to removable media, for example, a USB flash drive or CD-RW
If you have an R-Undelete registration key, write it down or save a copy of it in a text file on removable media.
If you do not have a registration key, you can run R-Undelete in demo mode. In this mode, all data recovery operations are available, including searching for files and scanning the disk. The only limitation is that in this mode you cannot save recovered files larger than 256 KB. This allows you to evaluate the possibilities of data recovery before purchasing a license. If the lost files are found, you can immediately buy a license, enter the received registration key into the registration field of the program and immediately restore the files without losing what has already been done.
Below we discuss in detail the process of recovering deleted files from an external exFAT disk R-Undelete. In this example, we will restore a folder (and all the files in it) called "Photos" that was deleted from the "MyVacation" folder.
Let's delete the "Photos" folder to the Recycle Bin (to demonstrate R-Undelete's data recovery capabilities only - you do not need to delete any files from your computer to study this tutorial).
Here you can see the "Photos" folder in the trash... 
To enlarge the image, click on it.
Regardless of how the files were deleted, you need to recover them using R-Undelete. Next, let's look at how this can be done.
Installation of R-Undelete
Download, install and run R-Undelete. If you are going to recover files from your system drive, install R-Undelete on external removable media to avoid overwriting lost files. See webpage for more complete information.
Recovering Deleted Files Using R-Undelete
Select the drive where the deleted files were located. In our example, this is the external drive E:\. 
To enlarge the image, click on it.
Hover over this drive and click Show files. R-Undelete will begin searching for files on the disk. This may take some time, depending on how large your hard drive is.
After R-Undelete finishes searching for deleted files, view the files found on the external drive 
To enlarge the image, click on it.
Now you need to find the files that you want to recover. To do this, R-Undelete gives you several options:
By sorting by file type
R-Undelete sorts files into the most common types and places them in the appropriate bookmarks. For our case, the corresponding tab is “Pictures”. This tab has an additional option for displaying files - "Tiles". Click on this tab, select Tiles and their size: 
To enlarge the image, click on it.
By manually searching for individual files or groups of files:
You can find files by searching them manually. To do this, click on the Search button, specify a file name or file mask, click on the Start button, and only the corresponding files will be shown.
To enlarge the image, click on it.
Files are searched on the current bookmark. Select the All tab to search all files.
For more detailed instructions on sorting and manual searching, see the R-Undelete help pages: and.
View files:
You can use the built-in file viewer to evaluate the chances of successful file recovery or to find the file you need to recover. Right-click on the file to view it. 
To enlarge the image, click on it.
Close the viewer to return to the remaining files.
Deep Scan
If a quick search doesn't find your deleted files, you can try a deep scan. During this procedure, R-Undelete deeply analyzes all data on the disk, including parsing information about files and searching for files based on their signatures. You can read more about the Deep Scan procedure and file signatures on the R-Undelete help page: .
Click the Deep scan button 
To enlarge the image, click on it.
R-Undelete will begin scanning. The scanning process can be monitored while the disk is being analyzed. 
To enlarge the image, click on it.
During scanning, additionally found files are automatically added to the corresponding bookmark. In this case, all settings for searching and marking files will be reset.
Depending on your hardware, scanning times may vary, even during the process, and can be quite long for large drives. The deep scan can be interrupted and then resumed by pressing the Resume scan button.
When deleted files are found, mark them for recovery: 
To enlarge the image, click on it.
When all the necessary files are marked for recovery, a sufficiently large amount of space on another drive should be available to save them.
Never save recovered files to the same place where they were, or you may lose them completely!
Choose how you want to save files: either in file type folders or in an actual folder structure.
After all the necessary preparations have been made, click on the Recover button to begin file recovery. Wait while R-Undelete recovers the files and evaluate the results. 
To enlarge the image, click on it.
After the recovery is complete, the folder with the recovered files will automatically open. 
To enlarge the image, click on it.
The recovery session is now complete. Go to the Disks panel to start the next session or click the Exit button to exit the program.
Upgrade R-Undelete Home to R-UNDELETE
The free version of R-Undelete Home allows the user to evaluate how the program recovers files from NTFS and ReFS file systems, for which it has full functionality for saving files smaller than 256KB. Regardless of this limitation, all recovered files can be viewed in the built-in viewer to assess the chances of their recovery before you upgrade the home version (R-Undelete Home) to recover files from NTFS and ReFS drives.
You need to purchase a license for R-UNDELETE if you want to recover files from NTFS and ReFS drives. Moreover, R-UNDELETE can recover files from any volumes visible to the operating system. This could be software or hardware RAIDs, Windows Storage Spaces, etc.
This can be done on the fly, even while performing file recovery operations, and the program does not need to be restarted. For more information, see the R-Undelete help page: .
Conclusion
You can see that recovering files using R-Undelete is quite easy even for a novice user. Using this utility will not damage your hard drive or affect the performance of your PC. Therefore, it is quite reasonable to try using this program before turning to the services of specialists.
When an important file is lost, a document you spent a week on is erased, and photos disappear from a suddenly formatted memory card, there is no need to worry ahead of time. When you delete a file from the disk, its description in the system is erased. The set of bytes that made up the file remains in place until something else is written on top of them. So you can try to recover your data using any of these applications.
Be careful if you install applications on a drive where deleted files were located. There is a risk that application files will be overwritten during installation. It is better to select another partition or physical disk for installation.
Platform: Windows.
Price: free, $19.95 for premium version.
Recuva can recover data lost by mistake, for example from an accidentally emptied Recycle Bin. The program can return photos from an accidentally formatted memory card in the camera or music from an empty MP3 player. Any media is supported, even iPod memory.
Platform: Windows, Mac.
Price: free, $89 for premium 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 restore erased files using 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: for free.
A very functional and versatile open source application. It has a text interface, but it is not difficult to understand.
TestDisk supports a huge number of file formats. In addition, the program can be burned to a LiveCD to recover data from a disk on which the system does not boot. The utility can recover a damaged boot sector or lost data.
TestDisk comes with the PhotoRec program, which recovers erased 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 full version.
R-Undelete is part of R-Studio. This is a whole family of powerful data recovery programs. 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 of up to 1 GB of data; $69.95 for 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 full version.
The Hetman developer provides a set of utilities for recovering various types of 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 included with 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.
It is difficult to find a user who has never had to bite their elbows, for example, after accidentally deleting an important document from a disk or an interesting photo from a memory card - this can happen in the hustle and bustle, or simply due to banal absent-mindedness. Of course, bringing a file deleted from your hard drive in the usual way back to life using Windows is not a problem - you just need to restore it from the recycle bin. However, the Recycle Bin is more or less regularly emptied by special cleaning utilities, and data is often deleted bypassing the Recycle Bin using the Shift + Del key combination (in order to save time and space) - in this case, it will no longer be possible to restore an accidentally deleted file from the Recycle Bin using Windows tools. As for deleting files from USB drives and memory cards, they do not go into the recycle bin at all - which means that it is impossible to restore them using the built-in Windows tools. And finally, accidentally deleting files is not the only way to lose valuable information. You can lose important data in other ways: as a result of a system failure, incorrect operations of a particular program, exposure to viruses, formatting a disk, deleting a partition, etc. In all these cases, Windows tools will not be able to “revive” the files.
So, should you immediately rush to a data recovery specialist when you lose your files? It is not at all necessary if you have a reliable utility to recover accidentally deleted and lost files. As a rule, with its help you can restore at least part of the information without any problems. The main thing is not to waste time and follow certain rules of the game.
In a nutshell about file loss and recovery
You shouldn’t immediately give up on accidentally deleted files, although they, for example, are not displayed in the corresponding Explorer folder and are not in the Recycle Bin. In reality, deleted files still remain on the media, since deleting them using the operating system does not physically destroy the files. It is not the body of the file that is deleted, but only its header; while the clusters in which it was written are simply marked empty and can be read until they are overwritten by new data. That is why deleted documents, presentations, pictures, etc. can be recovered using specialized utilities.
Recovering lost files is also possible in a number of other situations. For example, after quickly formatting a hard drive - after all, with such a procedure, information about the initial recording of allocated files is reset (for example, in NTFS - in the MFT area), and all other areas of the disk remain unchanged. Some utilities can also recover data from disks that have a damaged file allocation table, a deleted data partition, etc.
However, it would be reckless to say unequivocally that any file (even just deleted from the recycle bin) can always be restored. Alas, this is not the case, and failure is largely due to incorrect user actions. The fact is that any computer activity on a disk from which data was accidentally deleted can lead to the fact that the clusters in which fragments of the corresponding files are located will be overwritten, because the operating system now perceives them as empty. After this, restoring the corresponding files will be more than problematic. Of course, with partial rewriting, a number of utilities restore such files, but it is not at all a fact that such files can then be used (the exception is text documents, individual saved fragments of which can be worked with in the future). As for pictures, music, videos and other things restored after partial re-recording, this is usually futile. That is why, first of all, it is necessary to prevent the possibility of overwriting clusters - that is, do not write anything to a hard drive partition, flash drive or memory card with lost data, otherwise the chances of returning lost information to life will become minimal.
In addition, the possibility of recovering lost data may be associated with a number of circumstances that are no longer dependent on the user at the time of recovery. Thus, the chances of success are higher when recovering files from media formatted in the NTFS file system rather than FAT. The success of restoring a particular file also largely depends on the degree of its fragmentation: if the file is highly fragmented, then you can only hope (and even then with reservations) for its recovery in the NTFS system, but on FAT media it is most likely pointless. Naturally, for this reason, it is especially difficult to recover very large, frequently overwritten files on a heavily filled disk, which, due to circumstances, as a rule, always turn out to be highly fragmented.
It is also worth adding that none of the programs will be able to recover data after guaranteed destruction of information using specialized solutions, as well as low-level formatting.
How to recover files
The most important thing is to start recovering accidentally deleted and lost files as quickly as possible (ideally, immediately after deleting the file), although in practice there are often cases of recovering even long-lost data. However, there is no guarantee that the document you need will be among these invisible “long-livers”, so you should not hesitate.
First, you need to stop any computer activity on the media of interest, since the operating system can write some other data in place of deleted or lost files (even if you yourself did not write anything down at all), run the utility installed on your computer to recover lost files and scan it carrier. The situation becomes more complicated when we are talking about restoring data on the system disk, to which the system is constantly writing something. In this case, it is optimal to remove the hard drive with deleted files and connect it to another computer as a secondary one, and only then begin the recovery process.
As a rule, the default tools in the corresponding tools are a quick scan, carried out by analyzing file records. If during such an analysis the required file cannot be found (this is possible if the disk has been formatted, the partition has been deleted, etc.), then it makes sense to resort to advanced analysis. With this analysis, a deep scan of the disk is carried out with a complete scan of all sectors - it takes more time, but can be more effective. In order to speed up the process, you can resort to limiting the search area by data type (images, documents, etc.), file name, etc.
Under no circumstances should you restore data to a scanned disk, although in a number of solutions this is possible (again, due to the danger of overwriting the sectors of interest). Therefore, usually the recovered data is saved to another hard drive, another hard drive partition, or a flash drive.
Before you begin any data recovery efforts, you should consider the possibility that the loss of files may also be caused by a physical malfunction of the device. Most of the solutions discussed in this article will not be able to help in this case, and the process of recovering information in such situations requires certain professional knowledge and experience. In addition, further work with a faulty device may make it completely impossible to recover important folders and files from it. Therefore, in case of loss of critical information, it is wiser to abandon independent experiments and immediately contact specialists.
Utilities for recovering lost files
Until recently, utilities for recovering lost files were among the few categories where the bulk were very expensive commercial products, the capabilities of which are completely incomparable to what affordable, let alone free, utilities can offer. Now the picture has changed noticeably, and today home users, if they wish, can easily find effective programs on the market with which they can not only easily recover accidentally deleted folders and files, but also bring back to life data lost as a result of quickly formatting a disk, deleting a partition, and etc. It is precisely these - affordable or even free solutions for recovering folders and files - that will be discussed in this article.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery 6.6
Developer: MiniTool Solution Ltd
Distribution size: 5.64 MB
Work under control: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7
Distribution method: shareware (http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/download.html)
Price: Commercial license - $119; Personal license - $59; Free Edition - free (allows you to recover no more than 1 GB of data; only for personal or home use)
MiniTool Power Data Recovery is a comprehensive solution for recovering data from hard drives (IDE, SATA, SCSI, USB), memory cards, flash drives, CD/DVD and Blue-ray drives, iPods and other storage media. The program supports FAT12/16/32, VFAT and NTFS file systems and can recover files deleted from the Windows Recycle Bin, find and restore lost data (due to a virus attack, power failure, accidental formatting, partition deletion, etc.). Additionally, you can use this tool to recover data from damaged hard drives, as well as damaged, scratched, or defective CD/DVDs.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery includes five built-in data recovery modules: Undelete Recovery, Damaged Partition Recovery, Lost Partition Recovery, Digital Media Recovery and CD & DVD Recovery (Fig. 1). Each one focuses on different data loss scenarios. The Undelete Recovery module is designed to recover files and folders deleted from the Recycle Bin or using the Shift+Del combination. Works with hard and flash drives, as well as memory cards. Damaged Partition Recovery tool allows you to recover lost data from existing but damaged or formatted partitions. Partitions with MBR and dynamic disks are supported: Simple Volume, Spanned Volume, Stripped Volume and RAID-5 Volume. The Lost Partition Recovery module is used to recover data from a deleted or lost (for example, as a result of disk repartition) partition. The Digital Media Recovery module recovers data from digital multimedia devices (flash drives, flash cards, memory cards, iPods, etc.) and is focused on recovering lost or deleted photos (including in RAW format), music (mp3 files, MP4 files) and video files. The CD & DVD Recovery module is used to recover lost and deleted files from damaged, scratched or defective CD/DVD discs. This module works with various types of CD/DVD (CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-R and DVD-RW), supports multisession discs, some UDF discs (recorded using DirectCD, InCD , packetCD) and can recover data from RW disks formatted using quick format.
Rice. 1. MiniTool Power Data Recovery window
with five built-in modules
Despite the lack of Russian-language localization, it is not difficult to understand the nuances of recovering deleted and lost files in this utility, since all operations are performed under the control of a step-by-step wizard. For example, in the simplest case - when recovering accidentally deleted files - you just need to activate the Undelete Recovery module, specify the device to be scanned (Fig. 2) and click the button Recover, after which the program will immediately display a list of found folders and files. In most modules, scanning can be quick or full, the latter takes more time but is also more effective. Folders and files found during the analysis are marked with icons in the form of a cross, a question or an exclamation mark - the cross serves to indicate accidentally deleted files, and other icons indicate lost data and RAW files, respectively (Fig. 3). Images and text files can be viewed directly from the utility before recovery.
Rice. 2. Run disk analysis for deleted files
Rice. 3. Presentation of scan results
in MiniTool Power Data Recovery
Auslogics File Recovery 3.3
Developer: Auslogics Software Pty Ltd
Distribution size: 3.69 MB
Work under control: Windows XP(SP2 and above)/2003/Vista/7/2008
Distribution method: shareware (15-day demo version that allows you to recover no more than ten files no larger than 100 KB in size - http://www.auslogics.com/ru/software/file-recovery/download/)
Price:$49.95 (in the Allsoft.ru store - 990 rub.)
Auslogics File Recovery (formerly Auslogics Emergency Recovery) is a program for recovering accidentally deleted files, as well as files lost due to viruses or system failures. Using this utility, you can recover documents, music, photos and any other files from hard drives, floppy drives, USB drives and flash memory cards. In this case, you can recover not only files accidentally deleted in the usual way, but also files lost during deletion of a disk partition or quick formatting. As additional functionality, the utility includes tools for guaranteed data deletion and creation of disk images.
Recovery in Auslogics File Recovery is carried out under the guidance of a wizard (Fig. 4) and does not require any effort from the user (it is enough to decide on the media, file types, analysis option and, if necessary, set restrictions on the search area). The program has two scanning options: normal and deep (it is very long) - with deep scanning, it is possible to recover files lost after a quick formatting of the disk. To speed up the scanning process, you can resort to limiting files by type, setting up an exception list that includes files and folders that will be ignored during scanning, etc. Files found during the search are displayed in the main program window, indicating the program’s “opinion” regarding their status ( Fig. 5). The structure and names of folders, as well as file names, are displayed unchanged even during a deep scan for lost data. You can preview files - pictures, photographs, videos, text and PDF documents.
Rice. 4. Configuring settings for searching for lost files
in Auslogics File Recovery
Rice. 5. Result of disk scanning by the program
Auslogics File Recovery
Handy Recovery 5.5
Developer: SoftLogica
Distribution size: 2 MB
Work under control: Windows 95/98/NT/2000/Me/XP/2003/Vista/7
Distribution method: shareware (30-day demo version that allows you to recover one file per day - http://www.handyrecovery.com/download.shtml)
Price: 49 dollars, in the Softkey store - 950 rubles. (we are talking about the latest Russian-language version of Handy Recovery 4.0)
Handy Recovery is a convenient utility for recovering lost files. The program supports FAT12/16/32/64(ExFAT) and NTFS/NTFS 5 file systems and can recover data from a hard drive or other storage media, including CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MultiMedia and SecureDigital memory cards. The range of recoverable files covers a variety of formats: MS Office documents, archive files, email databases (Outlook and Eudora), photos, music and video files, etc. At the same time, you can recover not only accidentally deleted files (deleted from the recycle bin, deleted bypassing the recycle bin) , but also files damaged as a result of virus attacks and crashes, and files from deleted or formatted volumes. In addition to this, the utility provides the ability to create exact disk images for delayed recovery.
In Handy Recovery, the developers have implemented two scanning modes: standard (produced by analyzing file records and helps to recover deleted files if these records were not damaged) and extended, which allows you to find even data when the information in file records has been partially overwritten or damaged. Scanning in standard mode starts automatically immediately after starting the utility (Fig. 6); at the end of the process, a list of identified folders and files will be displayed in the program window; For convenience, lost files and folders are marked with a red cross (Fig. 7). For each file, the probability of its successful recovery is indicated. The contents of a number of files (Word and Excel documents, graphic and text files, archives) can be viewed before recovery in the preview window. As for advanced scanning, it is resorted to in cases where, after analyzing the disk, the files of interest were not found. With such scanning, you can search for strictly defined types of files (for example, images), lost file records, and also conduct a more thorough analysis of data deleted from the recycle bin (with a standard search, some of such data may not be found). The structure of the found folders and file names based on the scan results are displayed unchanged.
Rice. 6. Run disk analysis in Handy Recovery
Rice. 7. Display of data found during analysis
in Handy Recovery
Recuva 1.43
Developer: Piriform Ltd
Distribution size: 2.44 MB
Work under control: Windows 98/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7
Distribution method: commercialware (http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download)
Price: Business - $34.95; Home - $24.95; Free - free
Recuva is a very easy-to-use file recovery utility from the developers of popular solutions such as CCleaner and Defraggler. This tool allows you to recover photos, documents, music files, videos, etc. in FAT (including ExFAT) and NTFS file systems from hard drives, as well as from any rewritable media (flash drives, external hard drives, memory cards, etc.). Using this utility, you can recover accidentally deleted files, return files that were deleted as a result of system errors, crashes or virus attacks, and also try to recover files from formatted or damaged disks. Additionally, the program can be used to ensure guaranteed data deletion. In addition to the standard edition, the utility has a portable edition, which can be installed on a flash drive or external hard drive.
By default, the file recovery process is carried out under the guidance of a wizard (if desired, it is easy to disable the automatic launch of the wizard) - fig. 8; using the wizard allows you to narrow the search area, limiting yourself to only searching for images, music, documents, etc. The scan can be quick or deep. Deep scanning allows you to identify a larger number of files “buried” on the analyzed disk, but it also takes much more time. If necessary, advanced users can switch to the advanced operating mode and fine-tune the search parameters - use a filter by file type to narrow the search area, enable folder structure restoration, etc. Upon completion of the scan, a list of deleted files is displayed in the main program window (Fig. 9 ); Each file found is marked in green, yellow or red (the color indicates the chances of recovery). In advanced mode, the program additionally shows details about the file, an image thumbnail, and an assessment of the quality of the restoration.
Rice. 8. Run disk analysis in Recuva
Rice. 9. Result of searching files via Recuva
Pandora Recovery 2.1.1
Developer: Pandora Corp.
Distribution size: 3.11 MB
Work under control: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista
Distribution method: freeware (http://www.pandorarecovery.com/download/)
Price: for free
Pandora Recovery is a simple utility for recovering files in a variety of formats: photos, music, videos, documents, etc. The program supports FAT16/32, NTFS, NTFS5 and NTFS/EFS file systems and allows you to recover data from local, network drives and flash drives. It is possible to recover accidentally deleted files, as well as lost ones (if the MFT record was repeatedly overwritten by the OS, the disk is formatted, the file allocation table is damaged or is missing). In addition to the free standard edition of the utility, there is a commercial portable edition of Pandora Mobile Recovery, distributed on 1 GB flash drives ($19.95 per disc). It does not require installation and can be launched directly from a USB drive.
File recovery, as a rule, is carried out under the guidance of a step-by-step wizard, and this process does not cause any difficulties, especially since the wizard starts automatically when the program is loaded. To start the search, you need to specify the disk and select the file search method (Fig. 10) - there are three options here: search for all deleted files, search for deleted files taking into account the file name, its size and date of creation/modification, or a full scan of the disk (Deep scan ). The latter option is used to search for data on disks with a corrupted file allocation table, recently formatted disks, etc. Unfortunately, with such a search, file names and paths are not restored, only certain types of files are detected (images of the most common formats, MS Office documents, MP3 files, PDF documents and ZIP archives), and the scanning itself takes much longer . Additionally, this method only works on unfragmented files. Found deleted and lost files are marked with red crosses, while the names of files with partially or completely overwritten clusters are displayed in red, the names of encrypted (EFS) files in green, and compressed files in blue (Fig. 11). In addition, the program provides an assessment of the success of recovery of detected data in the form of a percentage of overwrites: the higher the percentage, the less chance of successful recovery. Before recovery, you can view images of popular formats and text files.
Rice. 10. Run disk analysis in Pandora Recovery
Rice. 11. Result of searching files through Pandora Recovery
Testing utilities
It was very interesting to try in practice to evaluate various programs for recovering lost data in terms of scanning speed and the effectiveness of their identification of deleted and lost files, which is what we tried to do. To do this, all the utilities in question were installed on one of the hard drive partitions, and a 3.7 GB flash drive was allocated for the experiment. This flash drive was among the working ones, and therefore contained certain information - in particular, a lot of software distributions, drivers, etc. In one of the driver folders there was a Chipset folder, which included six subfolders with numerous subfolders and 914 files with a total volume of 176 MB. It was this folder that was selected as one of the test folders (of course, the contents of the folder for further analysis and comparison were copied to the hard drive in advance).
After that, the flash drive was formatted in the FAT32 file system using the built-in Windows tools so that nothing was left on it. Then the Delete_files folder, previously prepared on the hard drive, was copied to the flash drive, including 50 files with a total volume of 66.8 MB. The files were in a variety of formats, including Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, ZIP, RAR and 7z archives, images (JPEG, TIFF, RAW, etc.), applications, music (MP3, WAV, MID) , ISO images, SWF files, AVI videos, etc. Then all files from the Delete_files folder were deleted, bypassing the trash (Shift + Del). After that, we conducted the first experiment on information recovery using each of the software solutions. The results are presented in the table.
At the next stage, in order to complicate the task, five new files with a total volume of 78.4 MB were written to the root directory of the flash drive. Obviously, the last operation should have significantly worsened the recovery results (compare the volumes of deleted and newly written files - 66.8 and 78.4 MB), since there is a high probability that a considerable part of the clusters in which the deleted files were originally located ended up partially overwritten when copied with other data. Then we subjected the experimental media to analysis by each of the utilities discussed in the article to search for accidentally deleted files (the Delete_files folder), and then, to the extent possible, we tried to recover the deleted files. Finally, we conducted an experiment to identify lost files and folders (Chipset folder).
Based on the testing results, it is clear that any of the utilities discussed can be successfully used to recover newly deleted data. And it is equally obvious that the result of restoring such files after writing new information to disk with an impressive volume (that is, when some sectors were overwritten) is disappointing. All this only confirms the most important recovery rule: do not write anything to the media and generally stop any work with it immediately after an emergency.
As for recovering files and folders lost after formatting, the results are mixed. The MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free Edition and Handy Recovery programs coped with the task best, but using Recuva utilities for these purposes, and even more so Pandora Recovery, turned out to be problematic due to the lack of folder structure and file names in their scanning reports. In addition, in Pandora Recovery the situation is further aggravated by the fact that the list of formats supported during Deep scanning is quite limited. Although you shouldn’t discount these programs anyway - these are some of the best free software products in their class, which are very easy to use and do an excellent job of restoring “freshly deleted” files.
Conclusion
Gone are the days when you always had to turn to professionals to recover lost files and this undertaking cost a very large sum. Today, there are many fairly easy-to-use utilities on the market that allow you to return files that were accidentally deleted or lost as a result of a computer failure, virus attack, or other computer disaster. Some solutions are offered at affordable prices for home users or are free for non-commercial use. Therefore, in simple situations when it comes to accidental deletion or loss of files, for example, as a result of quick formatting, it makes sense to restore the data yourself. But if the cause of file loss is damage to the hard drive at a mechanical or electronic level, then you should not experiment - it is better to entrust the data recovery operation to professionals.
When restoring on your own, you should act wisely and take care in advance that such a cataclysm does not take you by surprise. In other words, you should keep at hand (that is, on the disk in installed form) a couple of suitable utilities and, if possible, resort to data recovery as soon as possible in compliance with all mandatory rules (exclude the possibility of writing other data to the storage medium, save recovered files to another carrier, etc.). In addition, if you fail with one utility, be sure to give another a chance - their media scanning algorithms differ, so it is possible that the second utility will be more successful. And finally, do not forget that not a single solution, even the most expensive and powerful one, guarantees absolute success, and therefore no one has canceled the backup of valuable data.
Every day our computer is replenished, growing and gaining weight. Day after day, he swallows and stores a bunch of programs, files and folders in his “stomach”. And if the hard drive has huge volumes, then it’s not difficult to get lost in such vast spaces.
However, modern computers are smart enough and can easily find the necessary files inside themselves. Therefore, if you have lost your favorite song, an important document or a photo of the singer Maxim, then do not despair, because searching for the desired file will take no more than a minute. The main thing is to know how to look...
The information retrieval tool is located in the operating system. You can get to it through the Start menu --> Search or My Computer --> Search.
When all the parameters are set, all you have to do is click the “Find” button and the smart computer will start searching. This process will be displayed on the left side of the screen.
Perhaps the system will return not one or two files, but dozens or even hundreds, but as soon as the one you need appears in the list, you can use the “stop” button. In order not to lose it again, left-click on the file and select “Open the folder containing the object”
To make your search even more convenient and fast, you can use some little-known but effective methods.
Secret No. 1
If the file name is unknown or forgotten, but you know for sure that it was an image in jpg format, then instead of the main name you can put an asterisk symbol (example: *.jpg). Of course, this method will take a lot of time, but it will certainly give results.
Secret No. 2
If you are not sure of the exact spelling of the file name, then one of the letters can be replaced with a question mark. (example: k?rkorov. mp3). As a result, the system will find all files with the mp3 extension that have a similar name.
Now, searching for a lost file will not lead to wasted time.
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