Everyone has had their share of dumb moments when it comes to deleting files and formatting usb flash drives and memory cards. That split-second moment of remembering that the files are important is halted by the instantaneous notice that “All Files Have Been Successfully Deleted”. Is there a way to undo misreading the delete warning? Are my birthday and holiday pictures gone forever? The answer is Recuva – an undelete and file recovery software.
Lets get started with the installation and demo,
download and install Recuva - Recuva’s simple yet powerful options give you options for recovering deleted pictures, music, documents, video, and all other types of files. In the example below, we choose to recover pictures from an accidentally reformatted memory card.
Recuva proceeds with its magic – scanning your memory card for traces of previously saved files.
- After scanning, Recuva gives a list of all the deleted files, and an indicator on status of its possible recovery.
Green icons mean that the file is still intact and recovery will be successful.
Orange icons indicate a possible loss of data within the file – file may be recovered but contents may be incomplete or corrupted.
Red icons mean that the file is unrecoverable – it have been completely overwritten by a newer file.
In the example above, notice that several files were successfully found and listed for recovery. Files with green icons can be recovered. Simply select each file, and right-click “
Recover Highlighted”. Remember that its best to save the recovered files to a different drive. This prevents the possibility of overwriting other recoverable files. Files with red icons cannot be recovered as they may have been overwritten.
The Notepad-Pencil-Eraser and Recuva Analogy
Imagine your hard drive to be a physical notepad where you use a pencil and eraser to write notes and scribbles. Each time you save new files on your hard drive, they would be written on a blank page of your notepad. Each time you delete a file, the eraser would scrub off the pencil markings and clean the page anew. Now, this is where Recuva’s magic happens. Imagine Recuva to be a carbon paper that can be used to shade underneath your previously erased page – thus revealing the markings and dents of your erased handwriting. Recuva then asks for a different sheet of paper where it will attempt to copy and imprint your hand writing in an effort to restore and recover the lost files. Amazing and quite clever isn’t it?
Keep a copy of Recuva installed on your computer. Its free and reliable. I have used it for a number of instances like formatted flash drives, camera memory cards, and file deletion errors for my office documents. Keep safe, be alert when deleting and saving files, ang goodluck on your Recuva file recovery
