How to recover deleted files?

I have accidentally deleted some files. Is there any way to recover them with some recovery software ?

Assuming you deleted them in a way that they didn’t end up in your trash, you should stop using the PC immediately. The more you use it, the greater the chance the data is overwritten.

You can software like testdisk to data recovery but it is a non-trivial process.

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To confirm, if the data is valuable then take your disk to a data recovery expert.

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Assuming it hasnt been written over yes as has been stated, but its generally not a simple task to do for most people.

If you have to ask about it on the forum, you don’t know how to do it, and the chances are really high that you’ll mess it up and make the data unrecoverable.

Listen to what @Jonathon said, if it is important, have a professional recover it, if it is possible.

I haven’t used this myself but read at least one blog that said good things about PhotoRec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoRec

If you have the possibility, clone the disk to another one and operate the data recovery on the clone.

If you succeed, all is good. If not take your disk to an expert as has been mentioned above in the thread.

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I think recovering from a clone would only work if the cloning copies all blocks/sectors blindly.
Make sure that is how you clone if that is what you decide to do.

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Not an easy task. Sometimes you may get lucky.
Once I just deleted a script that was still running. I was able to copy it back somewhere from /proc/<PID of that running scrip>/. That assumes the file was still in use.

edit: I try to think about it as a leaning exercise. You delete something once, twice and next time you will be more careful. :wink: It sucks the first 2 time though. :unamused:

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