I’ve deleted some important files and emptied the Recycle Bin too. How can I get them back?

Well, you might be in luck. When we delete a file, even from the recycle bin or if we use shift-delete to bypass the recycle bin, its contents aren’t immediately destroyed.. Windows just marks the hard drive space occupied by the ‘deleted’ file as being available for use. It does this by changing one character in the file table so that the file entry won’t be displayed in My Computer or a commandline DIR command, etc. So if we start an undeletion process before Windows uses that part of the hard drive to write a new file, all you have to do is set that flag back to “on”. And you get back the file.

Restoration is a freeware program by Brian Kato that restores deleted files no longer in the Recycle Bin. It works on Windows 9x versions and also on Windows NT, 2000, and XP even in NTFS! It fits neatly on a floppy, since it is only 406 KB in size (and the Windows 2000/XP version is less than half that size), but you can also run it from your hard drive.

If you use a pen drive (aka USB drive) to store or carry your important data, then it is highly recommended that you have this tool with you. When you delete a file from your USB drive it is not moved to the recycle bin. It is straightaway deleted as if you had pressed ‘Shift+Delete’. So with a USB drive the possibility is greater of deleting a file mistakenly. But with a tool like Restoration you can be at ease.

There are other programs too that do a similar job, like the PC Inspector. It is also a good tool and with more features. But the advantage that Restoration has over the other softwares is that, you don’t have to install the application before using it. There is only an .exe file and a couple of .dll files. So the application is really portable and can be used anywhere you want.

You can download Restoration here.

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