How To Restore Deleted Files On Any Device
Few tech disasters can send your stomach into free fall quite like realizing you’ve deleted something important from your laptop or phone, with no obvious way to bring it back. Luckily, if you find yourself scrambling to restore your deleted files, there’s still hope. Free tools and apps are widely available to help you recover your deleted data no matter what platform you’re using. Here’s what you need to know.
On most modern forms of storage, deleting a file doesn’t actually delete it—it usually just tells the operating system in charge that the space the file is using is free for other data. If you can get in quickly enough, it’s possible to bring your file back from its digital grave before something else has rushed in to take its place, so speed is of the essence.
Back up, back up, back up
Being told you should’ve backed up your stuff right after you’ve deleted a folder full of holiday pictures isn’t very helpful, but it’s worth repeating for future reference. The simplest option is to use a cloud service: iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and most others all have undelete features built into them.
If you want to stick with local file storage for your backing up needs, then OS X has Time Machine and Windows has File History, and of course there are a ton of third-party options to choose from as well. If you buy an external hard drive or networked drive, it will often come with a backup program included.
In the case of Dropbox’s apps, for example, load up the web interface, then click Deleted Files to see a list of recently erased files and folders. Click Restorenext to any entry to bring it back. Deleted files are kept for 30 days or a whole year if you’ve signed up for Dropbox Pro and the Extended Version Historyadd-on.
Windows and Mac
If your files are gone from the Recycle Bin or the Trash, then you need a dedicated third-party tool to search for and recover your erased files. Recuva is one of the best and most well-respected options for Windows, while DMDEand PhotoRec are both worth considering as alternatives for undeleting your data.
Those of you on a Mac might want to take a look at Disk Drill, Prosoft Data Rescue and MiniTool Mac Data Recovery. All three come recommended from various sources, though (similar to Windows) there are lots of options to choose from. If one program can’t find your files, you should run a scan with a different program.
Recuva gives you a choice of a step-by-step wizard or “advanced” interface with more control. In both cases, you can choose the type of file you’ve lost and where it was (if you know), and Recuva gets to work. If the application doesn’t find anything, you can opt for a deeper scan, which is more thorough, but takes much longer.
In the program’s advanced mode, any fragments of files Recuva finds are ranked using a simple traffic light system. If a file is marked green, then Recuva has a good chance of bringing it back. Select the files you want to restore and click Recover to see if Recuva is able to rebuild them successfully.
Because of the way recovery programs work, you should shut down any other applications during the restore process (to prevent your precious data being overwritten). You should also restore files to a different location than the one they were originally in—again, this helps to protect the original data.
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