This is great when you’re playing file janitor for a day, cutting, copying and inevitably deleting files and folders you no longer need. Unfortunately getting the data back isn’t quite as easy as a trip to the Recycle Bin. You’ll need some recovery software, something like Pandora Recovery. Breathe. Relax. Let’s recover some data.

A Few Things To Remember

When a file is deleted, Windows usually sends the item to the Recycle Bin where it is marked for deletion but still very much on your drive. Once you’ve emptied the Recycle Bin the file is seemingly lost. Shift+Del is simply a handy shortcut to skip the Bin and zap a file.

However, just because the file or folder has been deleted does not mean your data has been destroyed. When a file is “deleted”, Windows simply marks that section of the hard drive as free, writable space. Provided you’ve not filled up the drive a few times, it’s very likely you’ll be able to recover those files.

This does of course mean that old hard drives, memory cards, flash drives and any other rewritable storage medium is subject to the same rules. If you format and sell an old SD card there’s every chance the buyer could attempt a recovery and enjoy your holiday snaps too. Regardless of how likely it is that someone would do this, it’s still very much possible.

Install Pandora Recovery

Assuming you’ve just lost a couple of vital documents, you’ll probably want to protect the medium they were stored on. Don’t write to the drive, don’t move or copy items and ensure you have at least enough free space on a separate drive for the files you want to recover.

Recovering files to the same drive that you are recovering from is possibly going to end in tears as your files have now been marked as free space, meaning it’s possible that you’ll overwrite the same files you’re trying to cover and lose your data. Don’t do it – recover to another drive and then put your files back where they belong.

If you’re recovering from your system drive then it’s probably a good idea to not install Pandora in this location, in case you overwrite the data. If you’re reading this without the need for an immediate recovery then ask yourself if you’re better off installing the software before you genuinely need it. Otherwise, choose another partition or better still prepare a portable USB install on another PC. It is also possible to buy a ready-to-rock USB version of Pandora for around $20.

You can grab Pandora here, choose Download.com as a mirror and click the Direct Download Now link below the CNET Installer link. CNET Installer will attempt to install crapware on your PC (you have to agree, but it’s quite a confusing dialogue) in addition to the Ask.com toolbar you should probably refuse in the main installer.

Once Pandora is installed or available as a portable app you’re ready to recover.

The Recovery Process

Recovering data with Pandora is fairly simple, and the first thing you’ll see is a wizard that attempts to guide you through the process. Follow the wizard and after choosing a drive you’ll be asked whether you want to browse for deleted files, search or conduct a deep surface scan.

Browse is great if you know where the data went missing from, and probably returns the quickest results. If you’re after a particular file then searching either for a matching name or simply by extension like *.avi or *.jpg will yield results. If your drive has been formatted, has corrupted file tables, is a removable/flash storage medium or everything else has failed then a deep surface scan is your best option.

You can easily skip between the functions in their respective tabs, and the recovery process is identical for all three methods. Once you have located a file or folder you would like to recover simply right click and choose Recover to… from the menu.

A dialogue box will pop-up requesting a location to store recovered data, remember: if you’re recovering from an external hard drive – copy to your main drive. If you’re recovering from system drive – recover to a USB or external drive. Do not write to your source drive.

Depending on how much data is being recovered you may have to wait a while. Recovering 17GB of video took me about 45 minutes, whereas a small file (documents or images) takes seconds. Once you’re done you’ll hopefully see something resembling the screen below.

Conclusion

Remember, if you can’t find your data with a search or browse then a deep surface scan is highly recommended. I deleted a few files to test the program and not only did it find the images I purposefully deleted but a lot of old music, video and image files from before my last format.

If you’ve tried Pandora Recovery and are still having problems then all is not lost. Maybe you’ll have some joy with another recommended recovery program. There is also a detailed FAQ regarding Pandora here.

If you have any thoughts on this or other data recovery tools then add your comments, below.

Fear not, Windows 7 has the answer. This guide will show you how to restore previous versions and recover deleted files using the Restore Previous Versions tool.

System Protection & Restore Points

In order for this method to work, you will have to enable System Protection. System Protection creates regular restore points every week, and also before major events such as driver  or program installations. If System Protection is disabled, restore points will not be created.

To check if it’s enabled, click Start, right-click My Computer and choose Properties. On the left side, click on System Protection. From here, you can choose your drive (you’ll have to enable it by drive) and click on Configure.

Here you can enable System Protection for all system settings and files, only for files and folders, or disable it entirely. You can also set how much disk space will be used to create restore points. The  more space you allocate for this the more restore points you’ll have, but your disk space will be used up, so use it wisely.

As I mentioned earlier, restore points are created automatically, but if you want to create one manually, you can do so at any time. In the System Protection tab, click on “Create”, name your restore point and create it. It might take a few minutes, but actually not as long as you’d expect.

Restoring Previous Versions

To restore a previous version of a file, right-click the file in question and go to the Previous Versions tab. Here you should find previous versions of your file. If you don’t see any, there might not have been a restore point since you created it, or your last modification was long ago and the restore point has already been deleted.

Before you restore a previous version, click open to see if this is truly the version you want. You can also copy the file to somewhere on your hard drive just in case. If you choose to restore, this will overwrite your existing version of the file.

If you also use Windows Backup, you will also be able to restore from backup at this point. You will have to have the media you used for backup available for that.

Restore Deleted Files

So this is the reason we all gathered here – let’s restore some deleted files.

To do this, you would have to access the previous versions of the folder in which your deleted file used to be. Go to that folder, right-click it and go to the Previous Versions tab.

From here, you can choose the version of the folder that you want and double click it. This will actually open a previous version of this folder, complete with all the files that were in it at the time.

From this folder you can simply copy or drag files to wherever you want. Just grab your deleted files and copy them back to where they’re supposed to go, and you’re done!

When I tried to do this, I got this security message:

But it’s OK, my own files weren’t really harmful and everything worked just fine!

Conclusion

The Windows 7 restore previous versions tool is actually extremely useful. I usually use Dropbox for this, but this is something I can use for every file and folder on my hard drive, and it only takes a few clicks to do so. The only downside is that you can’t really schedule restore points to happen whenever you want, so this is not really a solution that can replace backups. But for your everyday accidental deletion or change, it can be a real life saver.

What do you use to restore older versions and recover deleted files? Share in the comments!  Also don’t forget to read Tina’s Backup & Restore manual!

Image credit: Shutterstock

Let me come back to why I went searching for a portable recycle bin utility for my USB Flash drive. Nearly every software has a little portable sibling these days. Why not the Recycle Bin?  Especially when you consider that the Recycle Bin is an unquestionable safety net. As I had mentioned in my previous post: Don’t Click Delete ““ 10 Tips for The Recycle Bin, we miss the Recycle Bin only when it goes missing.

When we click Delete on any file in a memory device like a Memory Card or more commonly a Flash Drive, the file does not go to the Recycle Bin of the connected PC but vanishes forever. Even an Undo or a CTRL-Z cannot stop the final rite of passage. Obviously this is very unlike the behavior of a computer where you have the Recycle Bin as a limbo hold. The only solution to recover lost files in memory devices is to use file recovery tools like Recuva or Smart Recovery.

iBin brings the Recycle Bin back to the USB Flash Drive. The portable recycle bin application works with any removable device in any version of Windows.

Like any other portable software, installation is dead simple. Download, unpack and run the iBin.exe file in any removable device. iBin creates the container to hold the deleted files in the device’s root folder.

When the memory device is connected, iBin works silently in the background and can be accessed from the System Tray icon with a click.

The iBin process is simple as the delete function itself. When a file deletion on, say a USB Flash drive takes place, iBin catches the action and pops up an alert.

The user has the option of deleting the file permanently or sending it to the iBin. The iBin works exactly like the Recycle Bin in that it keeps all the files unless deleted permanently. The files can be restored when needed.

iBin has two important centers of operations ““

Dumping Management

The Dumping Management window is where the user gets to see all the deleted files in a scrollable view. It’s like the Recycle Bin with the Detail view. Files and folders have different icons and the file operations can be performed using the three buttons at the bottom.

Custom Options

Set your preferences from this window. One thing you might want to tweak is the Space Limit. You can move the slider to set the size limit for the iBin container to anything like 1% to 50% (of the total free size of the memory device).

The other important setting to consider is the button which sets up the Autorun.inf file to startup iBin whenever the Flash device is connected to the computer. The Windows OS should of course, allow the autorun.inf to run for iBin to start automatically.

iBin is a very compact solution for most of us who are quick draws with the Delete button. In our trigger happiness we often forget that a file deleted from the USB Flash drive disappears forever. Keeping that bad habit in light, iBin is an almost necessary part of any portable software suite.

Will this portable recycle bin be a part of your portable software list? How important do you think it is? Let us also know if you are aware of any alternative tool for the dumping and recycling job.

iBin ver. 2.7 is compatible with all versions of Windows.

Here is the post that will shed light on how to recover deleted emails in Thunderbird. So if you have recently deleted an important eMail and accidentally emptied the Trash, you may still be able to recover it. Just don’t compact your folders, yet!

Before you start, close Thunderbird and best perform a backup. At least make a manual backup of the files you are going to work with!

Open your Thunderbird profile folder. Generally this folder can be found under C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USER NAME\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles.

By default, the Application Data folder is hidden. To make it visible go to C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USER NAME\ and click Tools > Folder Options and open the View tab. Scroll down to Hidden files and folders and check Show hidden files and folders. Click OK to save and you should be able to see the Application Data folder.

You should know under which account and to which folder the deleted eMail was originally delivered. Otherwise you will have to apply trial and error and search through different accounts and folders.

Let’s say we’re looking for an eMail that was delivered to the Inbox, subsequently deleted and emptied from the Trash. The traces of this eMail should still be found in the Inbox folder.

Go ahead and open the folder for the respective eMail account, then launch the Inbox file without the .msf file extension in a text editor, such as Notepad.

If you’re unsure, click on one of the files and expand the file details in the bottom left of the folder. For the correct file type it should just say “file”, rather than “MSF-file”.

Opening files can take a few seconds or a few minutes, depending on how many eMails have survived termination in that folder. Make sure the text editor you choose can handle large file sizes. Some of my files were up to 300MB!

For my example, I picked an eMail I received from Stumble Upon this morning. I had deleted it and before attempting to restore the eMail I also emptied the Trash for this account.

When I looked into the Inbox file I indeed found that eMail along with all details and contents in my Inbox text file.

To recover the eMail and make it reappear in its original folder, change the X-Mozilla-Status to 0. In the example pictured below it says “X-Mozilla-Status: 0009″. The result should say “X-Mozilla-Status: 0″.

Save the file, close it and launch your Thunderbird client.

Lo and behold, my test eMail magically reappeared in my inbox.

Now to everyone who have been getting rid of secret or compromising eMails simply by deleting them, there is no need to suffer from a nervous breakdown now.

There is a way to remove those eMails forever. Simply compact your folders. My previous post on How To Terminally Deleted eMails In Thunderbird by Compacting Folders thoroughly explains the steps you need to take.

Did I save your day? Your feedback is appreciated, please use the comments!

Well, I am not getting into the criminal underbelly, but just jabbering about a long existing software that makes it possible to recover deleted files from a memory card used on digital cameras. PC Inspector Smart Recovery (v4.5) is a free, Windows only software that does one job (actually two”¦ as we shall see) and does it well.

Primary job: PC Inspector Smart Recovery is a freeware data recovery program from CONVAR for Flash Card/USB Flash Drive, Smart Media, SONY Memory Stick, IBM Micro Drive, Multimedia Card, Secure Digital Card or any other data carrier for digital cameras.

Secondary job: While it goes about its first job, it also offers a way to check the memory type for any errors.

I call PC Inspector Smart Recovery a “˜doomsday’ software. This one and others of its ilk help us to recover from our errors or those committed by our digital devices. If you think that the chances of losing some precious photo or video among the thousands we shoot with our digital cameras is one in thousands then give this software a miss. Otherwise, let’s give it a rip”¦

The download size of PC Inspector Smart Recovery is fairly compact at 6.1MB. The software is compatible with Windows XP (not tested for Vista).

These are the formats and digital camera types supported by PC Inspector Smart Recovery:

JPG, AMR, TIF, BMP, GIF, AVI, MOV, WAV, DSS, MP4, Canon (.crw) , Fuji (.raf) , RICOH (.raw), Olympus E-XX (.orf), Olympus C5050 (.orf), Nokia (3gp), Kodak (.dcr), Minolta (.mrw), Nikon D1H/D1X (.nef), Nikon D2H/D2X (.nef), Nikon E5000/E5700 (.nef), Konica Minolta, Sigma – Foveon (.x3f).

Installation is a no-brainer. And so is the use – in five simple steps.

1. Connect your memory card through your computer’s memory card reader or connect the digital camera/mobile phone with the provided data cable.
2. Start PC Inspector Smart Recovery. Select the drive letter (Select Device) used by the memory device from the first dropdown.
3. Select the file type (Select Format Type) that is to be recovered from the second dropdown. The Enhanced Options is for JPG format only. The default Automatic setting recognizes the format on its own. The With Thumbnails option assumes that your picture format includes thumbnails; the Without Thumbnails option assumes that your picture format does not include thumbnails.
4. Select the destination folder (Select where the images are to be recovered). Create a specific folder as opposed tp recovering them to an area like the desktop because the sheer number of images might create a mess.
5. Click on Start and the software indicates the progress through the progress bar.

   

Change the search mode”¦

The Settings menu lets you change the way the recovery is done. The Fast Mode is the default mode. The Intensive Mode scans more thoroughly and takes longer to complete. The recoverable file size can be limited optionally.

Check Media found under Menu ““ Function is a way to check the memory device for errors. Once started, the progress is reported by the software under the Media Check section. Any read errors like a “˜Not Available’ alert could indicate problems in the memory device, the card reader or the driver.

So has it helped me avert my doomsdays?

On my 4GB memory card with a sample of 160 pictures, I recovered all but six. Yes, the process was slow ““ about 160 minutes for an intensive scan. But the success ratio was great so I guess I can live with the slow speeds. Getting the lost pictures back at no cost is a definite deal maker for me.

There are a few others which fall under the broad category of file recovery software. Check these out. They might save your day ““

3 Remarkable File Recovery Tools
Recover Lost Computer Files with Undelete Plus
How To securely Retrieve and Delete PC files

So, what do you do when you unintentionally lose your Kodak moments (minus the teeth gnashing of course)? How do you recover deleted picture files from a memory card? Do you have your toolkit of “˜doomsday’ software?

I’ve got just the mate for you to help you recover from your loss. Welcome to the Data Game! 

Let’s meet contestant number one!

Recuva

Yo peeps! This is Recuva representin’ Piriform. I know ya seen me around. You know my homies – CCleaner for your optimizing needs and Defraggler regulating yo fragments in yo disk! Check this out…I Recuva da files from your bin, ain’t no sin, that’s just the world we’s livin’ in. Bringin’ back yo files in style, that’s how I profile, now ya go on and make yo boss smile! Check it!

Fo’ real, I work on all Windows boxes, MP3 players, memory cards and I can work on bringing back more than one file at a time. Beat that!

And now for contestant number two!

FreeUndelete

Dude, I’m like free and I undelete. Simple is like, how I am. No frills, just focused on the zen of recovery, y’know. Like, when I need to bring back a file that got some bad karma, I just say, “Whoa, stop! Reflect for a moment. To move is to erase.”

I don’t really think about it or clutter my mind with icons and pop-ups. I’m just, like, free, y’know. I’ll catch the wave on your 2000, XP or Vista, I’ll ride where I’m needed, bro! But I don’t do the corporate sell-out. You can only use me for yourself. I’m all about the interpersonal, bro. And I like to play the bongos naked.

Last but not least, let’s give a big Data Game welcome to contestant number three!

ADRC Data Recovery Software Tools

Good evening, I am ADRC Data Recovery Software Tools, but you may call me ADRC. On the surface, I’m a simple program with functionality and ease of use always in mind. I’m thinking of you. But deep down I’m very well rounded, somewhat complex even. One could say that I’m the Renaissance Man of free data recovery.

When you undelete with me, I give you so much more than your lost files back. I bring to the table the ability to back up a disk image and restore it. I can copy files from your hard disk with bad sectors, perform disk cloning, as well as backup, edit and restore your boot parameters. Really, is there anything I can’t do? That’s a rhetorical question, my dear.

There you have it, contestant One, Two and Three. So which one will win the Data Game? Well, that’s up to you, our lucky Data Batchelor or Batchlorette!  Tell me, which one will it be? Or do you have a special someone else in mind?

The interface of Recuva is similar to CCleaner, it is simple to use (even a computer moron could use it) and after testing it, it seems to be very effective in restoring deleted files. So I figured it deserved its own write-up on MakeUseOf.

So let’s get the short product description first of all from the Recuva homepage:

Recuva (pronounced “recover”) is a freeware Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!

But as with any deleted file that you want to bring back, the older it is, the harder it will be to bring back. Plus if you are able to bring it back, the older it is, the more corrupted the file will be. So if you want to bring a deleted file back, you need to do it as fast as possible. The more you delay, the less chance there is of recovering it.

After using Recuva for a couple of days, I have ended up being very impressed with it. It is very fast with finding recoverable files and when you click on what you want brought back, it restores the file and sends it back to your hard drive within seconds.

So here’s how the program works.

1. After opening the program, select the drive where the file was deleted then click the “scan” button.

2. Recuva then starts sweeping the specified hard drive looking for files that are able to be restored.

3. You then get a list of all the files that Recuva was able to find.  As you can see, some of the files are unidentifiable with just scrambled file names but a lot of other files have their original names intact (more on that later). What I really liked about Recuva is that it has a colour-coded system where you can see right away the status of each file and whether or not it is in any condition to be downloaded successfully or not.

Red means the file is basically screwed and you can forget it. Yellow means the file is in very bad condition but you can still download it and take your chances with it – some of it might be salvageable. Green means that the file is in excellent condition and you can get it back no problem.

4. If there are too many files returned to manage or you are looking for a particular file, you can filter the files. Just specify a file type or a file name in the “filename or path” field or drop down the menu to specify a file type.   So for example, by typing in “googleupdate”, I was able to find three particular files.

5. Now say I want to want to recover those 3 files? I just need to tick them and click the “recover” button. Recuva will ask me to specify where on the computer they should go and when I have told it, the files will start downloading. In fact, they are put back on the computer so fast that I didn’t even have time to make a screenshot!

That’s basically all there is to it. Just remember to untick those files in Recuva before you close the program because Recuva remembers those files next time and will keep on downloading them over and over again! So untick them once you have recovered them and you’ll be fine.

Do you use Recuva? If so, what have been your experiences with it? What percentage of files have you managed to recover using this app? Is there any particular file format in your opinion that recovers better than all the others?