How to Recover a Formatted or Deleted Data

How to Recover a Formatted or Deleted Data

In the first part of this series, I will cover how to perform data recovery in Windows, i.e, getting your data back in case you formatted the drive, or lost data due to any other reason.
In Second part I will demonstrate How to recover a data On Linux.

File deletion, what happens exactly?

Usually, when we delete a file, it goes to the Trash/Recycle Bin, provided the file is not larger than the bin’s capacity. One can restore these files easily. If you have emptied the Recycle Bin, permanently deleted the file using Shift+Delete or an rm command at the command-line, you may think the file is irretrievable and it isn’t. Only a pointer to the file is deleted as yet, not the data, which remains on the disk.

Data stored on a medium as files has a “table of contents “indicating the storage location for each file (name) on the drive. When a file is “deleted” its entry is removed from the table of contents. This indicates that the space previously used by the file can be used to store other data -- it is now “available” space.

When a new file is written to the disk, and uses this “available” space, it replaces the previous data with new data. Now, recovery of the old file becomes very difficult (though not impossible for experts). Thus, when you find that you have accidentally messed up and lost data that you want, you should avoid writing new data to the medium. This means you shouldn’t  continue running the OS that is using that partition or medium in read-write mode; even applications like a browser caching files, the OS downloading and applying updates in the background, or downloading new files and installing new packages, could cause the space of the deleted file to be overwritten.

Therefore, shutdown that OS immediately, and boot with a live CD or a live USB that does not write to that medium. Thus it is well said that data can be recovered if clusters are not over written.

Part I

Recovering data on Windows :

Today there are quite a few more tools available for recovering the data on Windows. Straight forward I will be using the Recuva software for demonstrating the data Recovery on Windows 7.

Step I

Download the RECUVA software from here Recuva Software.

Step II

Install the Software by standard recommendations

Step III

Run the Software as shown and proceed furthers

Click Next

Step IV

Select the File types to recover 

If you have to recover the entire data select others and click next

Step V

Step VI

Choose the location to recover

Step VII

Now your tool is ready to search lost files

Check the box “Enable Deep Scan” which will search entire disk and click next.

Step VIII

After search completion you will get the details of all your lost file as shown

It will show all the details such as filename, file path, modified date, size and state (excellent, poor, overwritten).

Step XI

Select the files to recover

Select the files to recover and click Recover button.

Browse the path to restore the files and proceed. And that’s all
The files with Excellent state are recovered successfully.

I hope you will find it by this tutorial to get the lost files.

In next post we will look how to recover the files on Linux.