Recover files that have been deleted from the Recycle Bin

Contributed by bulletcatcher221 August 22, 2006  
Tagged: Windows

Have you ever emptied the recycle bin and then realized that the file you thought you didnt need turned out to be the file you wish you had back?

Well, unfortunately, there isn’t a manual way to dig into the depths of your hard drive and pull files back out from the abyss. The recycle bin is a complete attempt to copy Apple’s delete protection. What it does is to move a file into a temporary directory, and then when the file is actually deleted by emptying the Recycle Bin, the File Allocation Table replaces the first character of the file name with a (?) character. This indicates to the hard drive that the space where this file was is now open for overwriting.

Before attempting to do anything else with the computer which might overwrite the delete file in this empty space, you should use a software package to recover it. Running system recovery may possibly overwrite the file you are trying so desperately to save.

I would use a utility such as . I personally use S&R myself, there are a lot of less expensive programs out there that will help you with your problem.

A popular free program that you might try is PC Inspector File Recovery. The download is about 2.9 MB. However, if you data is vital I would suggest using a fully featured program like S&R that has options to try and rebuild files that may have been overwritten.

And in closing, remember to consider what you have in the Recycle Bin before you empty it even though it *may* be recoverable. It is always better to double check to make sure you have an extra copy of a file before you delete it.