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Need decent undelete utility for Windows

I need to recover a directory of pictures (about 1GB).

What's the best method/software in your opinion for doing this? The platform is Windows XP.

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While you're waiting for your question to be migrated to Superuser, keep the hard disk drive where the files were deleted powered-off. Any writing you do that drive (which happens during the normal course of most PC operating systems running) lessens your chances of recovery. (Chant to yourself "I'll backup my data in the future..." while you wait.) – Evan Anderson Oct 26 '11 at 18:13
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migrated from serverfault.com Oct 26 '11 at 18:27

This question came from our site for system administrators and desktop support professionals.

closed as exact duplicate by Gareth, Mehper C. Palavuzlar, surfasb, Mokubai, techie007 Oct 27 '11 at 23:11

This question covers exactly the same ground as earlier questions on this topic; its answers may be merged with another identical question. See the FAQ for guidance on how to improve it.

4 Answers

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For NTFS partitions, you could try NTFSUndelete.

NTFS Undelete is an application that allows you to recover deleted files. It recovers files directly from hard drive, and it will work even if you empty Recycle Bin.

Before downloading NTFS Undelete, please consider the following:

When you delete a file, its content physically remains intact on the media, but the occupied space becomes marked as free. Next file saved to the disk may overwrite the contents of the deleted file.

It is very important to make sure that no application writes to the drive or partition where deleted file is located since every new file (even a small one) may overwrite the deleted file.

Do not open or close files and applications. Many applications create temporary files which may overwrite and corrupt your deleted files.

Tips. What you should do, when you realized that the file you need is deleted:

Depending on your system configuration, you should perform one of the following actions:

  1. If deleted files were located on the system disk (usually disk "C:"), or if you have only one logical disk in the system, you should not install any software into the system since it will most likely overwrite your deleted file.

  2. Run NTFS Undelete application and locate deleted file you'd like to restore.

  3. Always recover files to another disk or partition. Do not recover files to the same partition they were located, otherwise files you are recovering may get corrupted and unrecoverable.

  4. That's it, now you have your files back!
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up vote 2 down vote

While this question will unquestionably be migrated, I've had great results with restoring files with Recuva.

Follow what Evan Anderson said and don't perform any write actions to the disk you're attempting to restore from before you try to restore the files.

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up vote 1 down vote

GetDataBack, the best there is, bar none. Read carefully how to use it before attempting to recover.

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up vote 0 down vote

TestDisk is the free tool of choice. It comes with PhotoRec, which will try to recover even pieces of leftover images on your drive. It works for all kinds of partitions and file systems. Don't use NTFSUndelete unless you accidentally deleted files, since (like everyone is mentioning) any writes are detrimental to recovery.

NTFSUndelete should only be used after accidentally deleting files on a perfectly functional drive, not on failing drives. It would be better to get comfortable with TestDisk since it includes undelete features.

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Testdisk does partitions, phtotorec does files but it tends to rename them in odd ways, so some digging is required. – Journeyman Geek Oct 27 '11 at 1:05
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