Through an accident, I blame the dog for this one, my entire documents folder got deleted this morning. To compound the issue, the folder was ‘too big’ for the wimpy Recycle Bin, so the files were permanently deleted. When I realized what had happened, I nearly went into shock.
Customer documentation, contracts, important pictures of aforementioned dog, all down the drain. I’m definitely going to have a bad day now…I thought.
After normal breathing resumed, I learned 2 things.
- System Restore does not help unrecover files
- I really should have backed up my computer
I’m calmly writing this blog post because I found Free Undelete by Recoveronix Ltd. Free Undelete will look for deleted files and directories and restore them to their former glory. Brilliantly simple to use, and priced at $0 for personal use, I am a fan for life.
Recoveronix Ltd has an entire suite of recovery products like:
- Recover Corrupted Word Document
- Repairs corrupted Excel spreadsheets (.xls, .xla).
- Repairs corrupted Outlook mailboxes (.pst). The program also supports Exchange Offline Storage Files (.ost).
- Undeletes files from Outlook mailboxes. Recovery of messages removed from Deleted Items folder is supported for most occasions, but cannot be guaranteed.
- Repairs corrupted MySQL databases (.myd, .myi).
Supported MySQL versions:
5.x, 4.x, 3.x, 2.x and 1.x - Repairs corrupted Photoshop drawings (.pdd, .psd).
Supported Photoshop versions:
CS, 7.x, 6.x, 5.x, 4.x and 3.x - Repairs corrupted PDF documents (.pdf).
Supported are all PDF versions.
Get familiar with this list. I know grad students that would give their right arm to get back a mistakenly deleted thesis.
Important!! Read This!!
If you are furiously downloading Free Undelete right now to recover files of your own, pay attention to the following tips from the FreeUndelete folks:
Proper Usage Techniques
A deleted file is essentially an area on disk designated as free and ready to accept data (such as contents of some other file). Luckily, unless the area has already been overwritten, it still holds the contents of the deleted file. Due to this fact it is possible to undelete files.
This fact also dictates the following procedure for using FreeUndelete:
- Stop any activity on the disk you are going to undelete files from! Remember that writing to that disk can damage the contents of the deleted files. Examples of disastrous activity include: copying files to the disk, installing programs there or running programs that use the disk as their swap media.
- Download and install FreeUndelete. Whenever possible, save the setup executable and install the program to a disk that does not hold files you need to undelete.
- Run and use FreeUndelete.