Undeleting Files from You Hard Drive Many operating systems incorporate a “Recycle Bin” or “Trash” folder from which you can recover files that were deleted by accident. However, once you delete the files from the trash or recycle bin, the recovery process is not quite as simple. Fortunately, your system disk may still contain all or most of the files that were deleted and you can often recover these quickly with data recovery software.

	The first thing to do when files have been deleted is to turn off and stop using the computer immediately. When a file is deleted the information about the file is removed but the information is still there. However, if you continue to use the computer it will need more disk space and overwrite the deleted information. Once this happens, the deleted files are gone forever. System disks differ from SD cards and other logical disks because the operating systems on system disks continuously write data, even when no new data is being saved to the disk by the user. Therefore, the disk should be dismounted and examined with read-only access. We’ll get to that process in the following steps. Nothing in the world of computers is entirely simple. There is more than one type of formatting; three of the most common types of format are:
		Turn off the computer and do this right away with a hard shut down. Yes, pull the plug! Do not save any work, shut down or restart the computer because this will cause additional reading and writing activity.
		Mount the drive without starting the operating system. There are multiple ways to do this. You can take the disk out of the computer and install it in another computer as a slave. Be sure the operating system boots on another disk and not the one containing the deleted files. The disk can also be removed from the computer and connected to an external drive or USB enclosure. Finally, you can boot the computer with a bootable data recovery program to bypass the main system disk. However, you must make sure the computer is set to boot from the recovery program.
		Run a basic file recovery scan to search the disk for files that the recovery tool recognizes. Common file types that were recently deleted can often be found using this process.
		Run a raw file search if the basic file recovery scan does not recover the deleted files. This type of search scans for the digital signature of the files with known file types. Advanced raw file recovery tools also allow you to add custom file signatures for less common file types.
	CONCLUSION
	The above steps are commonly used in file recovery necessitated from formatting and file deletion. Steps 1 and 2 may not be necessary when the file deletion occurred recently, the files deleted were small and there is substantial free space on the disk. However, there is no harm in following each of the steps to optimize the potential of full file recovery. To recover files from a corrupt or damaged disk, an additional step must be taken to maximize the chance of recovery; a disk image must be created to avoid any further reading or writing activity.
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