Undeleting

I'm pretty sure a lot of us have either accidentally deleted photos or data from our memory cards or hard drives and wish we could take back what we'd just done right?  Or the storage device just suddenly failed on us or gets corrupted?  I used to think all is lost whenever something like that happens until I read an article in a computer magazine some years ago.

There is such a thing as "undeleting" or rather recovering those deleted or lost data from your storage medias (i.e. hard drive, USB drives, memory cards) as long as the data has not been overwritten with new data or information.  So the key thing to keep in mind when something like this happens is to make sure you refrain from using the storage media prior to recovering your files.

If you're wondering what this magical solution is, it's actually pretty simple.  The answer (at least for me) is Data Recovery Softwares.

Subsequent to reading the computer magazine, I did a quick search for the recommended software(s) and tried out PC Inspector Smart Recovery which worked wonders!  It helped me to recover as much or the deleted photos as it could (unfortunately I'd already used the same memory card to take photos).

PC Inspector Smart Recovery

(Freeware)

A couple of years back, I was having some problems with my laptop and I ended up missing a partition.  And woe is me, that particular partition was where I had a lot of my documents, photos and other data (without back up) and for some odd reason, the OS just wasn't recognizing the partition.  I tried the software above but unfortunately, it can't search for items in a "ghost" drive.  So I ended up on another search for a software to help with my situation.  Thank goodness, I managed to find one that actually worked, DiskDigger.  It totally saved me!  It managed to recover the data from the entire hard disk (not just by partitions) and I got my data back. Yay! It is available free for personal use but you'll have to deal with some annoying pop ups which personally I didn't mind as long as it could scan and retrieve.  The license, should you choose to purchase it, is priced at $14.99.

DiskDigger

(Free for personal use)

Another nifty little piece of software is by Piriform (I love their CCleaner and Defraggler softwares) and it's aptly called Recuva.  The software can be downloaded and used for free but if you like, feel free to send a donation to the development team at Piriform without obligations.  If you click the "Download" button on the website, you'll be brought to the Download page showing another button with a price tag on it.  This is only if you want to download the software with Priority Support (which they recommend).  Otherwise, just scroll down a little and there should be links to download it free.

Recuva by Piriform

(Freeware with option to donate)

And there you have it.  Don't fret if you wiped out your memory card by accident or was hit by plain bad luck and there was a power failure while you were in the midst of cutting and pasting your files between storage medias.  Just download one of these softwares (or other similar ones) and you should be all set.  I'm not saying that these softwares will be able to retrieve every single thing for you but it will help to retrieve most of them (which is better than nothing right?).  There are still certain files that these softwares are unable to recover though.  And unfortunately, all the softwares mentioned here are for Windows OS only I believe.  Care to share ones that has worked for you (and for other platforms too)?

Hope this little bit of info helped some of you. *smiles*