Loosing data can be an extremely frustrating and disheartening experience. Your digital music collection, personal files and especially those irreplaceable family photos can be gone in an instant.
Have you accidentally deleted data from your computer, external hard drive, USB thumb drive or even flash media card for your digital camera? Good news, all hope is not lost.
Let me start with a short story to put things in perspective. I had just finished a computer repair at a clients office. While grabbing a cup of coffee I noticed an employee in the break room with a look of terror on her face. It seems the photo department at the local big box store had misplaced her digital photo CD. Unfortunately this contained the only copy of her daughters first Christmas photos. After dropping off the CD she erased the original copy on her USB thumb drive. She had the empty drive with her and was more than willing to let me take a look. One cup of coffee and twenty minutes later I had recovered all her daughters photos. Needless to say she was ecstatic.
My computer repair experience spans over a decade and in that time I have helped numerous clients get their deleted data back with free software. Did he say free? Yep, free. Believe it or not there are several data recovery programs out there that don't cost a dime and are very user friendly.
The following are my top 4 favorites.
1. Recuva
This utility restores files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This also includes files removed from the Recycle bin in addition to images and other files that have been deleted from digital camera memory cards or even MP3 players. Files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses can easily be recovered as well.
2. Pandora Recovery
This powerful data recovery tool provides users an effective way to attempt recovery of permanently deleted files. And that does not mean restoration of a file from Recycle Bin. The software recovers files removed from Recycle Bin and also lets its user browse, preview and recover files deleted from NTFS and FAT hard drive volumes. Offers support for hard drives, flash drives and memory cards. Pandora successfully handles archived, hidden, encrypted and compressed files and recovers Alternate Data Streams. Pandora Recovery features easy to use interface wizards, hints and context-sensitive help. Pandora Recovery also allows the user to browse and search the entire tree of deleted files. It can even restore files on formatted drives.
3. PC Inspector File Recovery
A data recovery program that supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems. Finds partitions automatically, even if the boot sector or FAT has accidentally been erased or damaged (this option does not work with the NTFS file system). PC Inspector recovers files with the original date and time stamp. Offers the saving of recovered files on network drives.
4. PC Inspector Smart Recovery
A data recovery program specifically designed for Flash Card, Smart Media, Sony Memory Stick, IBM Micro Drive, Multimedia Card, and Secure Digital Card. Will bring back deleted pictures from any digital camera media.
Each of these free powerful data recovery tools are available freely at: http://www.download.com/
I have used each of the programs outlined above with tremendous success. Remember, you don't need to spend a fortune recovering deleted files now that you have an arsenal of free software recovery tools.
Good Luck!
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