Where is that file? It seems everyone who has ever worked with a PC or any device using digital storage has asked himself or herself that question at one time or another. Somehow files manage to vanish into thin air. It is almost funny. A file or program can be sitting right on your computer desktop and the next time you start up your PC that file is totally gone. How does this happen and how can we recover deleted files?

It happens in one of two ways. Either we were not paying attention when cleaning up and threw the file away or a logic malfunction caused the file to disappear.
Let us examine the first cause. Many times we make new folders on our computer to store the hundreds of files we shuffle around daily. We don’t want to use these files but we are afraid to discard them. So we make a little folder titled stuff and drop and drag every file in the way into it. Now eventually we decide to send the stuff folder to the recycle bin and before we look in it we empty the bin. Voila, deleted files! Another popular way to accidentally delete files is to use our right click on the mouse. When a file is deleted this way it bypasses the recycle bin altogether and is immediately banished from access.

So what we are saying is that one way that files end up being deleted unintentionally is when we forget we want them an throw them away. What is the other main means of file dislocation? This file loss problem is purely your computer’s fault. If you ever wondered if your PC had a mind of its own the answer is yes. Your PC is loaded with programs that often conflict with each other. These programs will in effect “clean up” items deemed superfluous. I once had a PC that would delete image files every so often. Dozens of files would disappear every so often on startup. This was because the program for picture storage had set limits on size for photos and would determined that some simply had to go. Another type of automated self-destruct for files is caused when we remove unwanted programs. Many times new programs must attach themselves to existing applications in order to function. They will even alter the existing code so as to make the new application work. Unfortunately the removal or uninstall of some programs does not reverse the process properly. Also many times another program has further altered the original design so that it is impossible to remove the older program and leave all systems intact. Basically what one needs to know is this. Sometimes our PCs will eat up files without any help from human error.

When we lose files due to either of these causes be it our own mistakes or our computer turning rogue agent we have two choices. We can replace the files or we can recover them. Replacing the files is a fine option when the missing data is a driver or a program we have on disk. But, when the lost files are data that has accumulated over years, and there is no back up source, replacing the files is not really possible.
So then what do we do? We recover deleted files. And how do we do this? With powerful programs designed to scan our hard drives and tell us exactly what is written on the drive.
When a file is deleted either or purpose or by accident the data in that file remains embedded on the magnetic media it was stored on until said time as new information is over written into that space. So if we can simply look at all the spaces marked empty we may be able to find our lost files. But how do we look at files that we cannot see? We do this using a third party data recovery program. There are powerful software programs available designed expressly to recover deleted files. These programs will scan an entire hard drive in seconds. They will then recognize text files, image files, partitions and pretty much almost any file that uses a common extension. These files are then offered for inspection in a list. You get one last chance to click restore and then resave these deleted files to a new area for storage.
Now it is important to remember that different operating systems require different programs to recover deleted files. A computer running Windows XP needs a program built to delve deeply into the NTFS file allocation system. A computer running Linux Ubuntu requires a file rescue program familiar with Linux Superblocks. And if you own an Apple Macintosh with missing files you will definitely need a file recovery program designed to scan Apple systems.
Of course not all lost and deleted files are missing from computer hard drives. In fact most data recovery these days is done on USB flash drives and for other digital media storage. Remember when you deleted all those pictures from your camera before you had downloaded them? Well those image files could have been easily recovered with a simple program to recover lost files.
In fact most of the programs available for this purpose are universal enough so as to retrieve lost data from dozen of types of storage devices. Smart Cards, iPods, MP4 players, even mobile phones all have room for digital storage and all have been known to displace a song or a picture from time to time. Whether you need an entire raid array rewritten or a lost song found on your iPod, the process recover deleted files is simple and similar.