A free program to recover (Recuva) and restore accidentally deleted pictures, photos, and files

Sooner or later you will be desperate to find out how to recover deleted files, because accidentally deleting your precious pictures, photos, and files is bound to happen to anyone. I hope that you do not encounter this dilemma, however if you do, you may possibly have a chance to recover deleted files. One way is to get a professional IT guy that specializes in file or data recovery, which in itself can be very expensive. Maybe you are recovering files from a crashed hard drive and haven’t actually deleted anything or maybe you want to recover deleted pictures from your digital camera. This article is about how to recover deleted files free using software but if you have a crashed hard drive then this is a different story altogether.

Firstly we need to know what has happened to our deleted files so that we can learn which action is best to recover deleted files.

What does Windows do with deleted pictures, photos, and files?

When you delete a file from your computer, providing it is not a huge file, it is sent to the computer recycle bin. There is usually an icon on your desktop that will allow you to open your recycle bin and see the file in there. If you have gone to that extra step of deleting the file from the recycle bin, then this is when we are faced with this situation of trying to figure out how to recover deleted files. Here is a basic tutorial on how to recover a deleted file from your recycle bin.

Even when you have deleted a file from the recycle bin it is not really gone. Windows simply marks the file as deleted, and waits for the space to be overwritten by another file needing the space, for it really to be deleted. If you didn’t format or defrag the drive the file may possibly be there for years to come. This is what happened with my D drive.

People often have to buy a program that will recover deleted files and photos, because that’s how desperate they are to retrieve their precious data..
Well this is your lucky day because you have actually hit the jackpot by finding this fantastic free program called Recuva. I know I was ecstatic when I found it and actually recovered my irreplaceable family photos that I had accidentally deleted from the recycle bin. I seriously thought that it would not work, because after all, it is a free program after all. More details are available on our freeware page.

“Recuva (pronounced “recover”) is a freeware Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!” Quoted from the Recuva website, it just sounded too good to be true.

When can you use Recuva to recover deleted files free?

• When you have recently accidentally deleted a file, photo, or picture from your computer you can use Recuva to recover deleted files.
• You can recover deleted pictures free when you haven’t used your computer too much and overwritten the deleted file.
• When this program says “No overwritten clusters detected” and that the file is in Excellent state after scanning your drive.
  When can’t you use Recuva to recover deleted files free?

• When you have been formatting a hard drive you will not be able to recover deleted pictures free because the files would have been overwritten.
• Sometimes if you have defragged your computer. In my tests, after defragging my hard drive I could not recover deleted pictures free as they were then damaged. At this point you would need a professional data recovery service.
• If the program says the file has overwritten clusters. If you are trying to recover deleted pictures free using Recuva and you see the files have a red dot next to it, that’s not good.

Recover deleted files – What are the results from my tests with recvua?

• I have two hard drives and scanned both. One is C drive and one is D drive. C drive is the main hard drive and D is storage. Nearly all the files that showed up were available for recovery.
• D drive had very old files show up. Half the stuff I could hardly remember because I had been storing files on there for a few years.
• C drive had less as I had recently formatted it, but all the recent deleted filed were available. Therefore I could recover deleted files easily, well the ones available.
• Then I decided to defrag C: and then scan it again. This definitely reduced the number of files that were in Excellent condition to recover. It probably overwrote 75% of files by defragging.
• I was amazed at what it actually recovered. It had every little thing that had been stored in my internet history, cookies, and other stuff that you thought would have been gone. It was almost scary how much detail this program went in to. All this from a free program.

Notes on how to recover deleted files:

• Files that has Excellent state and with the comment No overwritten clusters detected can be recovered.
• You should always recover deleted files to another hard drive as you might overwrite the file your are trying to recover.
• You can also recover deleted files and photos from your camera storage card! How great is that?
• This program is totally free and is made be the same guys that made Ccleaner. Their programs do no nag you to upgrade and they have no spyware contained in them. All they have is a donation button on their site. So if you find this free program handy then go and give these guys a donation.