Technical FAQ - I have accidentally deleted one or more files, can I get data back?

If you have deleted or lost files, immediately STOP writing to the partition the files were deleted from!

Successful recovery of deleted files depends on certain factors:

- File system
- Fragmentation
- Is all data still available (or already overwritten)

When a file is deleted its actual contents remain intact initially. However, in the partition's book-keeping of clusters in use by the file, these clusters are marked as free for use. The deleted file's filename is modified so the deleted file no longer appears in the directory list. As it is no longer known exactly what clusters 'belonged' to the deleted file, the successful recovery of files that were not stored in consecutive clusters is uncertain. If fragmentation is high the chances of a good recovery become less.

Whatever tool you use to undelete files, do NOT copy the tool to the partition from which the files were deleted, and do not recover the deleted files by copying them to another folder on the same drive!

Data Recovery Wizard can recover deleted or lost files. Please see How to Recover Deleted File(s) and Folder(s)?