How to recover deleted files. How to recover files deleted from your hard drive Recovering deleted programs Windows 7
Storing information in digital form has many advantages, among which the most significant is the amount of data that can be recorded in the minimum unit of memory of a digital device. But this storage method also has its drawbacks. If the storage device fails, the operating system crashes, or user errors occur, data may be lost. Fortunately, in most cases, unintentional file deletion is not permanent and with the right and timely approach, they can be recovered.
Recovering deleted files is possible thanks to the very algorithm for recording information on the hard drive. New files are not written to empty sectors or cells, but over previously deleted ones, physically stored on the disk until they are completely overwritten. That is, when deleting, files are not destroyed immediately. Instead, the system erases the first character of the file name and marks the space it occupies as free, while the file itself remains on the disk. The exception is SSD drives with the TRIM function enabled; the cells of such media are completely erased, so restoring accidentally deleted files becomes an almost impossible task.
So, is it possible to recover files deleted from your computer? Yes, quite, unless they were overwritten by other data. For these purposes, it is best to use special programs, since Windows itself does not have any intelligible tools. You can restore files using standard tools only if they have been moved to the Recycle Bin, and also if the system has the shadow copy function and/or file history enabled. First, let's look at an example of recovering files deleted from a hard drive without using third-party programs.
Recovering deleted files using Windows
In Windows 7 and 10, if you open the properties of any folder or file, you can see the “Previous Versions” tab, and in it - a list of backup copies of objects. Even if the files were deleted past the Recycle Bin, just select the desired backup version and click the “Restore” or “Open” button.
But it's not that simple. The fact is that your “Previous Versions” tab will most likely be empty, at least in the properties of directories on the user disk. In order for copies to be created, protection must be enabled in the system properties for the corresponding partition, that is.
Note: You can return deleted files using the “Previous Versions” function only if they were located in folders and not in the root of the disk.
It is highly desirable that the system also enable the “File History” function, which provides periodic backup of the contents of user libraries and the desktop.
This primarily applies to Windows 8 and 8.1 systems, in which there is no “Previous Versions” tab in object properties. It is difficult to say for sure what prompted Microsoft developers to remove it from the eighth version and then return it in the tenth, however, the shadow copy technology itself was untouched.
How to recover files deleted from a computer by gaining direct access to shadow copies will be discussed below, but for now let’s say a few words about “File History”. This option appeared in Windows 8 as an alternative to the “Previous Versions” function, which were tied to the creation of system restore points. The “File History” function is independent, but in order to use it, an additional physical disk or flash drive must be connected to the computer, or, alternatively, a network drive.
Recovering deleted data with its help is very simple. To do this, click on the “Recover personal files” link, select a folder or a file located in it in the window that opens, and click the button with a rounded arrow.
Now regarding the recovery of files from shadow copies in Windows 8 and 8.1. As already mentioned, the “Previous Versions” tab is missing in these versions of the system. So what if you need to restore a specific file, do you really need to roll back to the previous restore point? Not at all necessary.
Open a command prompt as administrator and run the command vssadmin list shadows.
As a result, you will receive a list of all restore points. Pay attention to the “Source volume” parameter; it will indicate the drive letter from which you are going to recover data. Then, having determined the backup copy number (it is indicated at the end of the Shadow Copy Volume parameter value), run the following command:
mklink /d %SystemDrive%/shadow //?/GLOBALROOT/Device/HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy7/
In this example, the recovery point is number 7, your value will be different. As a result of executing the command, a symbolic link will appear in the root of drive C shadow.
By following it, you will find yourself exactly in the shadow copy!
This method works equally well in Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10, but again you need to remember that it makes sense to resort to it only if the system has the function of creating system restore points enabled.
Recovering files using special programs
Above, we examined in detail how to restore files deleted from the Recycle Bin when emptying it or lost for other reasons, using the system itself. As shown above, all these methods have significant limitations. To be able to recover data directly from a disk, and not from backup copies, you should use special programs, including both paid and free ones.
R-Studio
R-Studio is a powerful professional program for recovering deleted files from a wide variety of digital devices, from hard drives to CD/DVDs and memory cards. The application supports working with all popular file systems, RAID arrays, and can create images of physical disks and individual volumes. Despite the fact that R-Studio is aimed at experienced users, the data recovery procedure in it is not complicated.
After launching the program, select the target disk or partition in the left column and click the “Show disk contents” icon on the toolbar.
In this case, a list of deleted directories will be displayed on the left, and their contents, marked with red crosses, will be displayed on the right.
Check the boxes for the objects you would like to restore and select the “Restore marked” option in the main menu. Next, in the window that opens, you will need to specify the folder to save the files, set additional recovery options if necessary, and click “OK.”
If files have been lost due to file system damage or formatting, it is advisable to scan the disk by selecting the appropriate option in the main menu.
Preliminary scanning of the media allows you to perform a more holistic and in-depth analysis, which means increasing the chance of recovering lost data.
Upon completion of the procedure, a new item “Found by signatures” will appear in the list of disks.
Select it with the mouse, click in the right column on the link “Files found by information about the typical features of their data structure”, mark the necessary elements in the next window and restore them.
Ontrack EasyRecovery
Another professional commercial product that allows you to quickly and effectively recover deleted files. Ontrack EasyRecovery has a convenient interface in the form of a step-by-step wizard, which greatly facilitates working with the program. The application supports data recovery from hard drives, ZIP and CD/DVD drives, flash drives, memory cards, RAID arrays, as well as various devices with flash memory.
The recovery procedure in Ontrack EasyRecovery consists of several stages. At the first stage you will be asked to select the media type, at the second you need to specify a specific disk or partition, at the third you will need to select an operation (in this example it is recovery).
To do this, select the directory with the deleted files in the tree list (it will be marked in green), right-click on it and select the “Save as” option from the menu.
You can also restore individual files by doing the same in the right column of the program window. If you switch to the “Previews” tab, you can view thumbnails of the files being restored, although such viewing is only available for images.
Recuva
Among the free programs for recovering deleted files, we can recommend Recuva. This simple yet effective tool allows you to recover any type of data from various digital media, supports viewing previews of images and hexadecimal code of files of different formats.
Recuva is very easy to use. After starting the program, you need to select a volume in the drop-down list and click the “Analyze” button. The program will scan the media and display a list of deleted files.
Check the boxes for the items you need, click the “Recover” button and specify the directory to save them.
You can also use the context menu by selecting the “Restore selected” option.
The program has a simple search by file name and format, and you can view basic information - status, date of creation and modification, size and full path.
You need to know about this
So, we looked in detail at what to do if you deleted the file you needed. Using third-party programs in this case has its advantages, as it allows you to recover files even if the partition is deleted and the file system is damaged, but there are some things to keep in mind. If you accidentally delete or lose files, never write any data to the partition in which they were located, as there is a risk of overwriting the sectors containing them.
For this reason, the recovery program should be installed on a “free” partition, different from the one from which you are going to restore. Ideally, you need to remove the hard drive, connect it to another computer and start scanning from it. You also cannot save recovered files to the same partition; in this case, you risk losing them completely. That is, if you are restoring files from drive D, you should save them to drive C or a flash drive.
After a file has been deleted and placed in the trash, sometimes there is a need to restore it. Fortunately, Windows developers almost always anticipate the user's desires and try to equip the system with everything necessary to be able to independently solve most system problems. Thus, Windows 7 provides a number of options for data recovery.
Recovering deleted files from the Recycle Bin
If the desired file accidentally went to the trash (we simply deleted it - either from the context menu, or by pressing the Del key), it’s too early to start panicking. In this case, everything is simple: open the Recycle Bin on the Windows 7 desktop, look for the required document in it, right-click and select “Restore”. Now we can see this file in the same place from which it was deleted. Select the “Recover” item from the context menu of the desired file
Everything becomes more complicated if, after simply deleting data, we habitually emptied the Recycle Bin (so as not to take up disk space). In this case, the file will be available for some time in a so-called “shadow copy”.
We are interested in the item “Restore previous version”
Windows 7 offers several versions of the folderAttention! Restoring from the “shadow version” is only possible if you have not manually disabled Windows protection and the “System Restore” function is running on it. “Shadow versions” are created automatically by the system itself when any changes are made to it. To create “shadow” copies, the user himself does not require additional actions.
This algorithm works for any type of information - be it photos, documents, videos, music and others.
Folders are also retrieved from the Recycle Bin in the same way, only when restoring from a “shadow” copy we access the versions of the “parent” folder - the one in which the folder being restored is located.
And one more method from the “Seven” operating system.
Browse by category and select the desired item
We need the item “Recover files from archive”Important! This method will only work if you have archiving configured and the archive itself is available (from where you will restore the file).
What to do if standard methods don't work
Unfortunately, standard means are not always enough to return information. This is where third-party utilities come to the rescue. To the user’s delight, there are more than enough of them on the World Wide Web.
The most common:
Among the features: Recycle Bin recovery, return of “permanently” deleted files and folders, and the most interesting thing - previewing files/folders before recovery to make sure that it is exactly what you need.
The application is nothing special, still the same functionality. The only interesting thing is the interface - it reminds everyone of the well-known Total Commander and is intuitive.
Using this program already requires certain skills. So, for example, it is advisable to disconnect the hard drive of your computer and search for the necessary documents from another computer. For an example of working with this program, see the link at the end of this article.
You can find detailed information on each program and its installation file using an Internet search.
How to recover a deleted program on Windows 7
Let's make a reservation right away - a miracle will not happen. That is, if you “demolished” the program, it’s easier for you to simply reinstall it. This is not difficult, especially if the installation file is saved or your “victim” is freely available on the network. Seriously. Just reinstall. You do not want? Okay, then let's talk about the nuances.
There is no means for a simple return. What we will be describing is correctly called “restoring Windows 7 to a checkpoint.” If, after deleting the program you need, you managed to install some other utilities on your computer, then when you restore the deleted one, you will lose them. Simply put, we will try to return the operating system to the state it was in before removal.
Another nuance - the method may work, or it may not. This is determined by the system itself, and here we are powerless. I repeat: if there are no serious reasons (such as Windows malfunctions), then simply reinstall the program. If restoration is still necessary, then we work on the points:
Select the first item on the right and click Next
On the left we see dates, on the right - details of points
We carefully read the information presented in the window and if we are satisfied with everything, click “Next”How to restore a deleted user
Basically, a deleted user is necessary because of the remaining data in the profile. All the necessary data can be found on drive C, namely along the path: C:\Users\<Имя удалённого профиля>. Here you will find folders with photos, videos and documents, as well as the Desktop and everything that was on it.
If you still want to restore not only the data, but also the account itself, use the universal system “restoration” tool described above - “restoring Windows to a checkpoint.” Among other features, this operation also restores lost accounts.
How to restore the service
Everything here is simple and at the same time sad - a deleted service cannot be restored by anything other than reinstalling the entire system. Moreover, if you remove a service, it may cause several services associated with it to fail and cause Windows to crash.
Removing system services is a guaranteed “kill” of the system.
Don't even think about deleting a service unless you are absolutely sure you know what exactly it does!
Recovering system files
First of all, restoring system files is possible using the same procedure as restoring a deleted program. If this does not help (for example, you have manually disabled Windows 7 protection and rollback is impossible), then we try other means.
The method described below is suitable if your system starts. If not, we say right away, contact a specialist.
Go to the Start menu. In the search bar, type in “Command Prompt”, which you can right-click to open as administrator. At the command line itself, you need to enter sfc /scannow and wait.
Now we have two options for the development of events. In the first case, the following will be displayed on the computer screen: 
The image on the screen indicates that everything is in order with the system files
This means that everything is fine with you, there is no need to restore anything in the system itself.
The second option is Windows 7, which actually has problems. 
In this case, Windows 7 detected all the errors and fixed them
However, your intervention is not required - the system itself detects errors and corrects them itself. After this, as we see on the screen, the operating system asks to reboot. Let's reboot. Done - the data is restored.
Video: how to recover deleted programs on Windows 7
Any changes you make to system files, services and Windows users are done at your own peril and risk - remember this. You should not get involved in the work of a stable functioning system without extreme necessity and appropriate skills. If a failure still occurs, please refer to the article. Remember - everything that you cannot do yourself will be done by a specialist. I wish you stable work in Windows!
When an important file is lost, a document you spent a week on is erased, and photos disappear from a suddenly formatted memory card, there is no need to worry ahead of time. When you delete a file from the disk, its description in the system is erased. The set of bytes that made up the file remains in place until something else is written on top of them. So you can try to recover your data using any of these applications.
Be careful if you install applications on a drive where deleted files were located. There is a risk that application files will be overwritten during installation. It is better to select another partition or physical disk for installation.
Platform: Windows.
Price: free, $19.95 for premium version.
Recuva can recover data lost by mistake, for example from an accidentally emptied Recycle Bin. The program can return photos from an accidentally formatted memory card in the camera or music from an empty MP3 player. Any media is supported, even iPod memory.
Platform: Windows, Mac.
Price: free, $89 for premium version.
Disk Drill is a data recovery application for Mac, but there is also a version for Windows. This program supports most types of disks, files and file systems. With its help, you can restore erased files using the Recovery Protection function, as well as find and clean the disk. However, the free version does not allow you to recover files lost before installing Disk Drill.
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, SunOS, DOS.
Price: for free.
A very functional and versatile open source application. It has a text interface, but it is not difficult to understand.
TestDisk supports a huge number of file formats. In addition, the program can be burned onto a LiveCD to recover data from a disk on which the system does not boot. The utility can recover a damaged boot sector or lost data.
TestDisk comes with the PhotoRec program, which recovers erased files, photos, music and videos.
4. R-Undelete
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux.
Price: the free version recovers files up to 256 KB in size; $79.99 for full version.
R-Undelete is part of R-Studio. This is a whole family of powerful data recovery programs. Supported file systems are FAT12/16/32/exFAT, NTFS, NTFS5, HFS/HFS+, UFS1/UFS2 and Ext2/Ext3/Ext4.
R-Studio applications can recover deleted data both on local drives and over the network. In addition to data recovery, the utilities provide tools for advanced partition copying and searching for bad blocks on disks.
Platform: Windows.
Price: free in trial mode with recovery of up to 1 GB of data; $69.95 for full version.
Eassos Recovery recovers deleted files, photos, text documents and more than 550 file formats. The application has a very simple and intuitive interface.
Platform: Windows.
Price: the free version does not save found files; $37.95 for full version.
The Hetman developer provides a set of utilities for recovering various types of data: entire sections or individual photos and documents. The program supports all hard drives, flash cards, SD and microSD.
Platform: Windows.
Price: free, $19.97 included with Glary Utilities.
Glary Undelete can recover any deleted files, including compressed, fragmented or encrypted ones. Filtering of recovered data is supported.
Do you know more convenient and functional data recovery applications? Tell us about them in the comments.
Many Windows OS users sooner or later face the problem of losing important data. This can happen, for example, if a folder is accidentally deleted or files are damaged by a virus. To restore information in such cases, there are both applications built into the operating system and special programs that are freely available on the network.
Ways to recover lost data in Windows 7
The following methods are suitable for returning deleted files from a computer running Windows 7:
- recovery from recycle bin;
- using a previous version of files;
- use of special software (DMDE, etc.).
The first two methods are standard and do not require installation of additional software.
The success of the recovery procedure directly depends on whether, after deleting the files, any data was written to the same disk partition where the required information was previously located. This is due to the fact that when writing (copying), new data can overwrite old fragments, without which resuscitation will simply be impossible.
Recovering from the Recycle Bin
This recovery method is the easiest to perform, but it is only relevant if, after deleting the information, you have not yet emptied the trash. This happens quite often, so the first thing you should do is check its contents:
Using this method, you can revive not only one file, but also an entire group by selecting them using the arrow keys on the keyboard and the Ctrl key.
Working with a previous version of data
Previous version of files is a program built into Windows 7 that allows you to restore accidentally changed or deleted data to its previous state. This function is closely related to system restore points and works only on volumes where system protection is activated. File protection is enabled automatically on the system partition. For other volumes it must be activated manually.
Let's look at the procedure for recovering deleted data in Windows 7 using system protection using the example of the Program Files directory, from which the DVD Maket folder was accidentally erased:
If files have been erased from the Windows desktop, then to resuscitate them you should restore the “Desktop” folder, which is located in the system partition in the Users -> “Username” folder. 
When working with the System Protection application, you need to know some points:
- "Previous Versions" are created along with Windows restore points;
- if the file being restored was changed several times during the day at different times, then the “Previous version” will save the change that was relevant at the time the recovery point was recorded;
- the number and duration of storage of “Previous files” depends on the amount of disk space reserved by system protection.
Recovering files using DMDE
DMDE is a software resource with which you can search and restore deleted data on many storage media (HDD, USB flash drives, SD memory cards, etc.) in Windows OS. A significant advantage of this utility is that it does not require installation. You can find both paid and free versions of the program on the Internet. For private use, the second option is quite suitable.
To recover files using the DMDE program you will need:
If you use the free version of the program, you will not be able to restore a folder or several documents at once. In this case, you will need to resuscitate one file at a time.
Data recovery using Recuva
Recuva is also a free recovery software. It has a minimal number of settings and an intuitive interface, so even a novice user can master it.
Windows 7 File Recovery from the backup we created, the article is written as a continuation of the interesting topic Archiving computer data, in which we went through the process of creating a backup archive of personal data and a Windows 7 system image from the very beginning.
Windows 7 File Recovery
Next, we will restore personal data from our archives using the Computer Data Archiving tool built into Windows 7 and not just restore, but present various tricky situations. We will learn recover Windows 7 files all at once or separately. For example, we will not restore all the data entirely, but only the file that we need. We can also find out our data from a backup archive on someone else’s computer if something completely catastrophic happened to ours.
As we agreed in the previous article, you created backups on a portable USB hard drive, and I created them on a simple SATA hard drive with a capacity of 465.76 GB, which I use exclusively for storing data archives. For a better understanding of exactly how this happens Windows 7 file recovery, let's imagine that on the hard drive of the computer that we have at work, an inexperienced system administrator (this also happens to experienced ones) accidentally destroyed all the partitions with Acronis Disk Director, and accordingly all our data, along with the Windows 7 operating system, disappeared. The TestDisk program, as well as Acronis Recovery Expert, do not always help. There are two options left for R-Studio and... here we remember about the backup copy of our data created the day before on a portable USB hard drive. We are reinstalling Windows 7, connecting a USB drive with our archive and restoring all our data.
- Note: If you do not want to install Windows 7 again and you want the backup archive to already include the operating system with all your programs and settings, you need to use the System Image Creation tool for archiving, read our article.
Start -> Control Panel->Archiving computer data ra
If you have created several backup archives of your data, select the one you need in the Select another backup to restore files window.
So Recover my files, now attention, if we want to restore a specific file from a backup archive, we need to click the Browse files button and find it ourselves, but if we know the name of the file, we can use the Search function,
For example, let's find the CDImage music file in my backup, type CDImage in the search, we found it, click OK and restore it.
If you don’t know the exact name, then in this window you need to select Browse files, then double-click on our archive with the left mouse and find our file,
Let's, for example, find the My Music folder in my backup archive, and in it the CDImage music file.
If you need to restore another file, you need to click Browse files again and repeat the search. We will now restore our file, to do this we will press the button Add files. 
click Browse, select, for example, Local drive C and create a folder, call it Recovered files and OK.
