Ever had your computer crash and have files missing when you restarted? Or deleted a file, just to realize that you really need it back? Those are just two of the many cases for a data recovery tool for your Windows PC, and one of the easiest to use is Wondershare Data Recovery Program.
If you’ve ever emptied the recycle bin on your Windows computer, you’re a perfect candidate for Wondershare Data Recovery, but there are plenty of other reasons a program like this can be helpful. Certainly it’s the very rare Windows user who hasn’t had their system freeze up, crash or put up the so-called blue screen of death, requiring a forced restart and, sometimes, a set of data scans so you can get out of safe mode and back to running the system normally. And if you lose a few files along the way, that stinks, but surprisingly many people just accept that as the price of running a computer system. And yet they don’t have to, and that’s another big reason why a data and file recovery program can be your best friend.
It all revolves around how the file system on your computer works. In essence, it breaks down your drive into millions of “blocks” of data then chains them in sequence to create larger and larger files. All unused space is also chained together as free space, and when a file increases in size or a new file is created, the blocks needed for it are taken from free space and allocated for that file. Delete a file, however, and its blocks of data are still intact, they’ve just switched from the active file list to being part of the free space chain. And it’s the ability to analyze the free space that makes programs like Wondershare Data Recovery work!
Enough talk, however. Let’s have a look at how the program works. To test it, I sought to recover an image file that I’d deleted a few weeks earlier on my Windows 10 system. Worth noting is that the program supports and can recover over 550 different file formats, but I gave it an easy job, a JPEG graphics file.
The program launches with a very visual reminder of how easy it is to work with:
So let’s answer those two simple questions!
To proceed, click “Next“…
I’m seeking to recover a photo/graphic file, but since I’m curious about what else it might find when it’s scanning through the file system’s free list I’m going to choose “All File Types” for the maximum number of results.
Another “Next” button to click and we’re on question #2:
As you can see there are a range of different media and locations on your file system you can specify for the recovery. The temptation might be to always choose “I can’t remember” and let it scan the entire computer, but that’s going to be a big job and take a while, so since you can always expand the data recovery net later, I recommend specifying a location at this point. I’m going to use “Desktop and My Documents” which is probably where most lost files were located on a Windows system.
That’s it. Two questions answered. This time a click on “Next” gets the program started. Almost:
Deep Scan, as they call it, is a more thorough examination of the file system, but at the cost of being slower. What I recommend is that you do not choose this because you can always rescan with the “deep scan” later if the faster approach doesn’t find the file or files you seek.
Click “Start“.
Now the program will start doing the work, scanning for files, documents, and other data lost in the free list of the file system. In process, it looks like this:
And this time the fast scan wasn’t sufficient, as the program tells me:
Okay, let’s give it another shot! A click on “Yes” starts the deep scan of Desktop and My Documents (as chosen earlier).
Success!
You can see that it’s found a number of files (as shown on the left by file category) and that in the JPEG list is indeed my lost file, a photograph with the snazzy name “IMG_0170.jpeg”. I can even preview it, as shown.
To recover all the files, I simply click “Recover” but I could also uncheck all the different file types on the left side first. But hey, let’s just do it!
There’s a problem with what I’m doing, however, because you don’t really want to recover files to the same disk as you’re recovering the data from. Still, I can proceed and see what happens…
Yeah, Wondershare Data Recovery knows that it’s a problem too, and warns me. Instead, I’m going to put in a USB flash drive and use that as the output device instead:
This time the process proceeds a lot more smoothly:
And after a few moments, the program’s done and when I go and look on my E: drive, sure enough, there’s the recovered photograph in the “Data Recovery” folder:
Quick and easy. I found Wondershare Data Recovery super easy to work with and quite effective in practice. Seems like deep scan is the better mode in terms of reliably having it find the maximum number of lost files, documents, etc, but it might depend on how long ago the files were lost or deleted. Definitely a recommended program, however, and perhaps smart to get before you need it, rather than once you realize you’ve lost a critical document or set of photos.
Wondershare Data Recovery. $49.95 for Windows systems, $89.95 for Mac OS X.
Disclosure: Wondershare sent me a license and paid a small fee for me to evaluate and review this software program. The tests and results, however, speak for themselves in terms of it being a useful application.
Hi Dave,
Thanks very much for this valuable information. Do you know if Wondershare Data Recovery will work with Linux? That’s the only operating system I have.
Thanks!