How To Retrieve A Deleted File

Your first reaction if you've just accidentally deleted a file on your computer is probably to go to the recycle bin. Depending on where you deleted the file from, there's a reasonable probability that your file will be showing there , waiting for you to click "restore".

But what can you do if the file doesn't show up in your recycle bin? Is the file lost permanently? Murphy's Law says that files deleted by accident are usually ones that you haven't got a backup of. What a pain!

Forunately it's almost always, it's possible to retrieve a file from oblivion. Even if your recycle bin thinks otherwise. That's because Windows just marks the space the file used as being available for re-use.

The problem is that this won't last forever and the more "stuff" you do on your PC, the bigger the risk that Windows will overwrite some or all of the lost file, making recovery difficult or even impossible.

So stop whatever you are doing on your computer. That really does mean stop, not just slow down. Including browsing the internet, looking through your music files, and so on. The more time you take to stop, the higher the chance that Windows will think it can re-use the space you've created by deleting the file.

If you can use a different PC, use it to download a program like this one to undelete files. If you haven't got the use of a second PC then it's possible that you'll be OK using your only computer (the chance increases if there is a large amount of disk space left unused) but only do this as a last resort.

Once you've got your copy of a program to undelete files, it's just a matter of following the simple prompts on screen and there's an exceptionally big probability that the software will recover the file you accidentally deleted.

You can download a file undelete program here. It's even got a free trial, so you'll know that it works for you.