Most of us know how embarrassing and awkward is to accidentally delete a file that we need from our Windows PC. The good news are that most of those files that we unintentionally wipe off can be easily recovered by using the right utility. The even better news are that some of those deleted file restore utilities are free for personal use and can be easily downloaded from the web and installed in your PC.

You might asked yourself a valid question. If the files were deleted, how come they can be easily recovered? Well, i don’t want to get too technical, but i will try to explain the gist of it: after you delete a file, the disk area that was previously occupied by that file is flagged as free and ready to accept new data (new files). Therefore, if new data wasn’t saved to that disk area, you will be able to recover the deleted file.

Today, i decided to point you to 5 tools that you can use in order to recover files you delete by mistake. Most of those tools allow you to recover files that were deleted either from the Recycle Bin, from a network drive or were permanently “deleted” by holding the Shift key pressed while deleting the file. In order to test the file recovery tools, I decided to purposely delete two files :

• a 800 MB avi file 
•  a 75 KB Word document.

 After that, i used CCleaner in order to drain my Recycle bin (I could have done it also manually of course).

Here are the results of the test i executed:

JFile Recovery: A Java based tool, JFile Recovery failed in recovering the 800 MB AVI file. The fact it requires a Java component in order to run, introduces some complexity into the installation process, but overall, Jfile is fast and reliable.

Recuva: I was a bit disappointed from Recuva, as it didn’t manage to recover the 800 MB avi file. That’s a bit strange, as you would expect Recuva to be able to easily recovery files delete with it’s twin utility – CCleaner.That said, I fully recommend to use Recuva for recovering smaller files because it’s fast and intuitive to use. A great tool for beginners.

PC Inspector: Failed to recovered the 800 MB file. Scan of my 80 GB disk took around 1.5 hours to finish. Disappointing results for a freeware with an overall good reputation. 

Free Undelete: Failed to recover the 800MB file. Free Undelete is a pretty basic utility that doesn’t run on Vista.

Undelete Plus: As expected, Undelete Plus recovered both files quite easily. Not surprised at all as this is in my opinion the free file recovery utility in the market. Undelete Plus features an intuitive interface and support for Windows Vista , XP and older operating systems.

Wrapping up

Based on the stress test i did to the five aforementioned applications, it looks like Undelete Plus and Recuva seem the most effective and straightforward free file recovery applications. Can you recommend on other file recovery applications? Your comments are welcome.