Sometimes we delete important files by ourselves - accidentally or not accidentally - or we become prey to a breakdown or a virus. Let us start from the beginning and check if our files have been removed completely.
The beginning users usually feel hopeless once they have deleted a file and they come to terms with the fact that they have lost important documents, essays, holiday photos, and so on. This is a huge mistake, since these files can be usually retrieved. Sometimes it takes a few seconds, in other cases - quite a while and much more effort - but you can always try. Interestingly, in a vast majority of cases the files you have lost were not removed anyway! How to check it?
Step one: Did you really remove that file?
In a majority of cases we remove important files by accident - all you have to do is to mark too much, accidentally click on "Delete", and so on. Remember, however, that in such cases you files are not removed permanently, but only moved to the Bin. Even beginning users know about it. Anyway, if you have removed some files by accident (or so it seems) first of all go to the System Bin. If you have a lot of files in here, we recommend using the search bar - just type in the name or a part of it and then hit Enter.
If there is still too many files to choose from you can sort the files according to various filters, for example modification date (in our case - removal date). To do so, right-click on free space in the Bin and choose from the context menu "Sort by" > "Date Deleted". If you havent't found the file in the Bin, you can search the whole hard drive. Go to "Computer" from your desktop and in the search field type in the name of a file (or a part of it) and hit Enter.
Remember that when you have various programs that clean you hard drive and work idly in the background it may be difficult or even impossible to retrieve lost data. Such applications often automatically empty the Bin after a certain period of time. If you have such a program you should turn it off immediately after you have experienced a data removal.
If a file you have removed was earlier on a virtual hard drive in a cloud service such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or SkyDrive, chances are it's still there. You should log into your account with another device and then try to search for the file and copy it to its new location.
Sometimes even when you have emptied the System Bin it is possible to retrieve files. In next parts of the series we will talk about the pros of creating backups.
