How to Recover Deleted Files from Your Hard Drive

Can I recover deleted files from my hard drive?

There are many ways you can delete files from your hard drive. Normally, when you delete a file from your computer's hard drive using the "Delete" key, the deleted file goes to the Recycle Bin from where you can restore deleted data. However, in most cases, you will need a tool like the Data Recovery Wizard to recover deleted files from hard drive. For example:

• You permanently deleted files from your computer's hard drive and emptied the Recycle Bin
• You used "Shift + Delete" to remove data from your hard drive
• You deleted files from an external hard drive (files removed from external drives bypass the Recycle Bin)

How to Recover Deleted Files from Your Hard Drive

To retrieve data from a hard drive, you can use the Data Recovery Wizard tool – the Data Recovery Wizard – or send the hard drive to a manual data recovery service. However, considering the cost of hard drive recovery, it's recommended to try a data recovery software first, which is more affordable and faster than manual recovery services. Apart from retrieving deleted files from a hard drive, the Data Recovery Wizard tool also supports:

• Formatted recovery, Lost Partition Recovery, System Crash Recovery, Virus Attack Recovery, and RAW Partition Recovery • Retrieve lost data from hard drives, USB flash drives, storage cards, digital cameras, and more • Recover virtually all types of files, including images, audio, videos, emails, Microsoft files, Adobe files, and more

Steps to recover deleted files from a hard drive using file recovery software:

Step 1: Choose a location and start scanning

Launch the Data Recovery Wizard. Hover the mouse over the partition/drive where the deleted files were stored and click “Scan” to look for lost files.

Select the location where you deleted your files from

Step 2: Select the files to recover

Once the scan is finished, select the deleted files you wish to recover. You can click on the filter to display only the file type that you want. If you remember the name of the file, you can also search for it in the “Search for files or folders” box – this is the fastest way to locate your target file.

Step 3: Preview and recover the deleted files

Preview the recoverable files, select the ones you want to restore, and click “Recover” to save them to a new location instead of the disk where you lost data.

Video Tutorial: Recovering Deleted Files from Your Hard Drive

If you want to recover data from Mac hard drive, you can download the Mac version of Data Recovery Wizard tool to recover deleted files from Mac trash.

Knowledge Base - Why can we recover deleted files?

There is a common misconception that when we delete a file, it is completely removed from the computer's hard drive. In fact, whenever a file is deleted from a hard drive, it is not wiped out. Instead, only the tiny bit of information that points to the location of the file on the disk – the entry – is deleted. These pointers, along with those for every other file and folder on the hard drive, are stored in an area near the beginning of the disk, and are used by the operating system to build a tree structure of directories. By deleting the pointer file, the actual file becomes invisible to the operating system. This means that new data can be written over the space where the old file was.

Therefore, as long as the deleted files on your hard drive have not been overwritten by other data, there is still a chance for you to recover deleted files from hard drive. That's why we are able to recover deleted files, formatted data, lost files…

Bottom line

Frankly speaking, recovering deleted files from a hard drive is one of the fundamental features of almost all data recovery software tools. You can compare and choose the one you prefer. Furthermore, to avert future data loss, it's advisable to back up important files to another hard drive or storage device. While data recovery is helpful in most cases, it's always better to prevent data loss from happening in the first place.