How to recover a deleted file off an external HDD?

I dont mean to sound like an ass, but why the hell would you link me to a PAID product? Im obviously not gonna dish out $25 for some program.

Ill try with Recuva, that supposed tutorial is bogus too as it doesnt explain how to actually recover the file

Hey there,

Recuva works great, I've used it on all sorts of drives including cameras, usb sticks and external drives. (yes I'm clumsy and lose my stuff all the time) Just make sure the external drive is plugged in, run recuva and choose the correct drive. Like Ace says, don't use the drive until you've recovered your info and don't try and recover it to the external drive you are recovering from. As you write to it you will write over the things you want to recover.

It works because deleting the file or formating the partition doesn't affect the file, it just removes the software key that points to the file. So Recuva ignores the boot file tree (or whatever it's called) and searches the drive directly for files.

I always use the quick option first, it get's me most things and then if I don't have want I want I use the deep scan but don't expect great things from the deep scan but it sometimes gives up a few extra photos that you want. But if you've had the drive for a couple of years you're going to have a lot of useless crap to sift through unless you know the name of what your looking for. I always sort the list out by file type.

Hmm alright, Ive been running Recuva, I pointed it to the most specific folder I could, thats where my dads friends file was, hopefully itll find it, I just thought if you reformatted it, itd make enough passes to make it unrecoverable? Or do I have to use a special program even if Im reformatting an entire drive?

How many passes does it take? Also, CCleaner says NSA for like 7 passes, but Gutmann for 35 passes, wouldnt NSA use a buncha passes to make sure their files are safe XD? or is NSA not National Security Agency lmfaooo

NASA, NSA, ASIO and such actually grind their drives into dust. (or at least the australian defence force does, so I presume so do intelligence agencies,) but generally if you use software to remove something you can use software to bring it back, so it's not safe.

Formatting doesn't write over it, like i said, it just removes the drive tree making it ready to write over.

If you really want to delete something personal so nobody can find it sure, use programs like shredder or ccleaner, but I find that
a) they take so long to do 1 pass on a large drive you'll need to leave it overnight if your going to do 7 or 35 passes (try 2 days). (And yes, unless you are in the national security business you are not going to be able to afford software to recover that sort of write over. and
b) rename your files before you delete them as programs such as recuva for example can retrieve file names even if it can't recover the file itself. No point deleting the file if you have something recoverable called "how to make a bomb from porridge ingredients" sitting in your recover list for everybody to see.

Ps- I opened recuva just to be of help, just use the dropdown arrow to choose your drive (default is C:\ which is not the drive you want) and the options box to choose the depth of the scan (deep scan takes ages) and from memory I believe where you write to is an option once you've pressed the scan button.

install recuvra and it will scan the hard drive and recover any files, unless it was securely deleted and over written many times

quick info for noobs out there

a hdd stores the data on the hdd and then when it is deleted it is flagged as availible space and then when the computer needs the space it uses it to write something else

this is why when you lose data they say to turn your computer off straight away

Even though I have nothing to do with Recuva or it's company, I love all piriform products so I will defend them. If you choose to try and recover a program that recuva tells you is corrupted or unrecoverable, it will still try, but it will be blank.

I.e. if it's been written over, Recuva will tell you the file was on the drive, but won't be able to recover it properly, but will still try if you ask it to. (This can be useful if the file is a document as it may recover some text, but not all which you can cut and paste into another document.)

Ps - ACE I have never had an active virus on my system and I'm the opposite of you, I don't believe in paying for 3rd party services (I had AVG free + adaware running for 2 years without hiccup) just get your freeware from reputable sources. majorgeeks, cnet, filehippo or nonags are good choices. Don't download freeware from a site you don't know anything about, even if you recognise the name of the product, do your research to make sure you are on the real manufacturers page or a reliable freeware site.

"2 AceWilliams
I don't believe in freeware.Freeware made my laptop got infected by virus some times.I would like to paid for professional and reliable software.What's more,while searching in google,I have read that Recuva recovered files which turned to be blank files! "



What makes u think that paid soft is better? For almost every $20-$40 soft u can find same or better capability and comfort and ease of use in freeware from video audio edit to registry cleaner ,disc manager .... Just do some research first, so u don't try every crap u can d'load

"Freeware made my laptop got infected by virus some times." Funny

A quick format only erases the file allocation tables. The files still exist on the drive, there is just no way for the OS to access them. A full format is likely to do way more damage.

You can alo try EASEUS data recovery. There is a free version.

http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/

You can recover accidentally deleted files and folders from external storage drive with the help of a third party data recovery software, go for Kernel for FAT and NTFS file recovery software which helped me a lot and recovered all my file and data from my computer. You can use this one as this is an efficient data recovery software. it has an user friendly interface through which you can preview your data in scan mode and then you have the choice to save all or some selective files to your location. For more details - http://www.filerecoverysoftware.net

I never came across a trustworthy freeware that enables you to perform a deep scan for lost files and recover them.
Most of the ones that I used were sharewares and they worked great, it even worked after I reformatted my laptop.
Somehow, windows compresses the deleted files and keep them somewhere on your drive and cannot be seen, but still they are there.
Sometimes it also depends on the size of the files being deleted, then you might have an issue restoring them back. If it is a normal excel sheet. Then it should work properly!
You can try

Undelete 360
R-Undelete
Recover My Files
GetData recover my files pro
Active Undelete

Cheers
Kev

I used Pandora Recovery on my WHS 2011 to recover Video's i accidently deleted using "SHIFT Delete" it's a small (1.60mb)FREE WARE and it works great.

Link to download: http://www.pandorarecovery.com/download/

Recuva is a great free data recovery app but there are still many shortcomings with this program, such as it is not so good at recovering data from a formatted drive, or disk with partition problems (say partition lost or damaged) etc.

As to your case, I recommend you to give a try of this program FileRetrival (seems personal version is free). But no matter what programs you use, the first thing you should do is stop using the external drive to store more data. Best regards.

Free tools for you:
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file...

You could check this:
http://www.free-recovery.net

Hello There,
You can easily recover data from your hard disk that too without any difficulty. There are number of ways that can get your data back from your hard disk after loss. Suppose you want to recover deleted files from hard drive then you need to use the back ups and if not available then you have to go for the recovery software. To get software you can download on the link and can the demo version of the software.   recovermyharddrive.org/deleted-files.html  

Regards
Matt