Have you ever accidentally deleted a photo or other file from your
computer or digital camera? Even if you clear the recycle bin, there is
still a chance your pictures can be recovered.
Even though a file was deleted there is a good chance the contents of
the file are still around. When a file is deleted the contents of the
file are not removed. Only a pointer to the file in the file system
table is deleted.
Time is your worst enemy when restoring files.
When the pointer to the file has been deleted the operating system can
use that storage space to write and store new data. The longer it has
been since you realized the file was deleted increases the chance any
remaining file content has been overwritten.
It is very important to immediately stop writing to the storage
device that previously contained your pictures so that the old file
contents are not overwritten. For example, don’t take any more pictures
with your digital camera because new pictures will overwrite the
deleted files.
Next, you will need to use a utility to reassemble the file remains back into the original files.
I like to use a free utility called Recuva by Piriform. Head over to
http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download/standard to download a copy.
After the utility is installed start it up and click cancel on the
Recuva Wizard screen. I’m not a big fan of wizards, instead I’m going
to show you the power user method.
First, select the drive you want to scan for the deleted files.
There are two ways to scan for deleted files. First we are going to use the default scan method by just clicking Scan.
The results pane will be populated when the scan is completed. Files
that are green can be recovered by other files that are yellow or red
have been overwritten. Previews are shown for some files when you click
on them.
Check the boxes next to the files you want to restore and click Recover.
Select a location to restore the files to and click OK. Make sure you
select a different storage device/drive than where the files are
currently located so you don’t overwrite the file remains.
Your files will now be recovered.
Deep Scan
Earlier I mentioned there is another method to recover deleted files
with Recuva that is helpful when the files you want do restore were not
found with the normal scan.
Running a deep scan will check the actual sectors on the storage
device for file remains. You can enable this scan option by clicking
Options on the main screen.
Click on the Actions tab, check Deep Scan and click OK.
Now just click Scan again and go for a walk because the deep scan can take a while depending on the size of the drive.
When the scan is completed restore the files the same way discussed above for the normal scan.
The
IP address of your computer can be set from the command prompt by
running the following commands at an administrative level prompt:
