Recovering Permanently Deleted Files Windows XP for FREE

How many times instead of just pressing DEL, we actually press SHIFT + DEL and then immediately realize that we have permanently deleted an important file or folder of what ever. It could be as simple as a movie which you wanted to move from one folder to another in the wee hours of morning and accidentally deleted or your wedding pictures or probably the RAW file of your much loved photograph.

Whatever it is the ending problem statement is pretty straight forward how to recover the file.
Smart people [ah nothing to do with the practical smart people but those who know the power of Google and whose life rather job depend on it] try googling and the results are usually varied.

On several occasions in last so many years I have come around tools which have so many restrictions but in the end want you to pay some money before you can recover your file. And the file in essence was never so important for me to pay $50 or may be 100 or may be even more to pay for it.

So this morning I was just trying to move a file and accidentally deleted it (my bad but am not really a morning person) and then recovered it with in 10 minutes. It is pretty straight forward so I thought for my fellow newbies I will just lay out the procedure.

The moment you know you have deleted a file stop copying deleting any more things from the hard drive. If you have two partitions like C: and D: please identify the drive or folder where the file was deleted from. In bold letters so that it sinks in faster - STOP ADDING or REMOVING FILES FROM THE HARD DRIVE IMMEDIATELY

[I don't know why but I never really bothered to know - something to do with how files are managed by the file system but I presume even you are not interested to know else you won't be reading this blog :)]

Download and Install a software called "Pandora Recovery". The same can be downloaded from here. Installation is pretty straight forward and all you need to do is confirm the directory where you want to install this software.

Start Pandora.  Please select the drive from which the file was deleted. I deleted it from my D: drive and hence selected D: and the scan starts. Wait for the scan to finish and try to identify from where the file was deleted. It will usually appear with a small red cross in the folder where it was deleted from.

Here are the snapshots to help just in case (Click on any Image for larger size)

Pandora scanning identified drive:

Displays the drive contents after scan finishes:

Displaying the deleted file in the folder with red cross

Right click on the file and select the Recover option. Please suggest the drive where you want to recover. Please recover on an alternate drive with a similar file system. USB and External Hard Drives are better options. (In this example I was recovering to C: drive a file which was deleted from D: drive)

Following screen displays recovery in progress

Confirms recovery is complete.

That's it ! It is that simple. A great tool isn't it.

Please donate to the guys behind the team by visiting there website for providing such a great tool for free at there website http://www.pandorarecovery.com/

Other useful information:

a) Recover Archived, Hidden, Encrypted, Compressed files
b) Recover Alternate Data Streams (ADS)
c) Recover Images, Documents, Movies, or any other type of files
d) Recovery success estimate
e) Review File properties and Drive properties
f) Recover to Local Hard Drive, Network Drive, or Flash Drive
g) Recognizes NTFS, NTFS5 and NTFS/EFS
h) Compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows 2000
i) Wizards, hints and context-sensitive help

Tip: Launch the "Surface Scan" and try to identify your file if normal scan cannot find it.