Select file or folder, press Delete key, click empty Recycle Bin, stop breathing, hit panic button… Sounds familiar? And then, have you felt that supreme feeling of futility and vacuousness well up when you learn that your hard disk has packed up? Well, despair not. And heed not the quick gun, format friendly hardware engineer when he tells you all is lost. Until you have tried out these remedies. They may just save your skin, sanity, soul even after a trigger happy finger has found the Delete key... Or the dark forces of digitaria have dealt death blows to your hard disk’s partition tables.
Before you say your prayers and attempt data recovery, there are some important points you should keep in mind. If you have deleted a file or folder inadvertently and want to get it back, avoid using your system or concerned media till you have managed to retrieve your data. The more the activity on the disk/media, the greater the chances of your deleted data being overwritten. So do not copy any files to the disk containing your lost data.

Phenomenally fast
Avoid Web browsing; a browser’s cache files could obliterate your deleted files. Avoid launching unnecessary programs; again, a program’s temporary file writes to the disk. In fact, delete as many more files as you can to create more free space as there are chances of overwriting lost files with new one. So empty the Recycle Bin. Clear you browser’s cache. Install a recovery program, but not on the disk where your deleted data is located.
When it comes to data recovery tools, nothing is really beyond salvage if you have a tools Recuva (www.recuva.com) at hand. Free, fairly user-friendly, and phenomenally fast, it allows you to get into the file recovery act in two ways: Via the easier file-recovery wizard way or through the manual mode. As is obvious, the wizard makes things simpler. The wizard lets you narrow your search type to photos, music, documents, video or all deleted files, and you can set the search location to everywhere on your computer, removable media.

High-end functions
Else Restoration (http://is.gd/ fWRF8) is another good option. You don’t even need to install it. The tiny, no-frills tool runs off flash/pen drive or CD, scanning your hard/USB drive for files that have been deleted. You can then recover any recently deleted files it finds with a single click. If you know the name of the file required, it is even easier. Even if you have gone and perma-killed a file by pressing the Shift key when you deleted it, this will bring it back from the dead.
Last, but not the least is the all-powerful TestDisk (http://is.gd/fWS6J). Apart from exhuming basic file undelete services for Windows, Mac OS as well as Linux computers, it also performs several high end functions. These include recovering your boot sector from a backup, rebuilding your boot sector, fixing FAT (File Allocation Tables), and finding lost partitions in dozens of formats to help you locate your lost data. Unfortunately, this utility is command line driven and doesn’t have a graphical user interface. But it works beautifully.
The writer is a part-time
publishing consultant and a full-time devotee of all things tech. Contact him at ashishone@gmail.com