Sometimes you can recover files you’ve deleted from the recycle bin

By | October 5, 2012

Ruth wants her pictures back
I accidently deleted some photos I had put in the recycle bin. I would like to get these pictures back as they are from my 50 year class reunion. Is there any way I can retrieve the deleted items in my recycle bin? Thank you for your help. I love receiving my newsletter every week. I have been a member for quite a while and trust everything that you have printed in your newsletter. Your suggestions are very helpful in working with the computer. Again thank you.

Our answer
Thanks, Ruth. We are assuming here that you “Emptied” your Recycle bin. If were wrong, and you haven’t – you can easily get the files back from your recycle bin.

So let’s assume you have emptied your Recycle bin and the files you deleted are gone. We’ve explained what happens when you delete a file in Windows many times, but it never hurts to refresh our memories. When you delete a file in Windows, nothing is removed from your computer. Windows marks the space occupied by the file you deleted as unused. The file you deleted is still there but you can’t see it our use it. If you act quickly enough, before the space that the file you deleted occupied, your can recover it using a free program called Recuva (you can get it athttp://www.piraform.com/recuva ). But you have to do it soon after you’ve accidently deleted the file, the longer you wait the greater the chance it the space will be overwritten with other data. And while you can recover files from overwritten space, you won’t be happy with how they look, especially photos. They’ll have bits missing and not (probably) be acceptable.

Any file that ever existed on Windows – in fact everything you’ve written or done on your computer can be resurrected using high-tech forensics software – which is very expensive. Recuva does a good job of restoring accidentally deleted files as long as you act quickly enough – and recover the files before the space they occupied is overwritten.

We hope this helps you.

One thought on “Sometimes you can recover files you’ve deleted from the recycle bin

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *