If you have important information on your crashed hard drive that needs to be restored? Are you unsure of how to recover lost hard drive data? This article provides you with information you need to learn how to recover files from hard drive . Well, recovering your hard work will require figuring out the best data recovery tool. Disk Doctors Data Recovery Software family has easy to use applications that can recover files from a hard drive having logical failure.

Precautionary steps to be taken in case of a hard drive crash

• Stop working on the drive
• Do not run any repair utility for e.g. “chkdsk ”, as this further may cause permanent data loss
• Do not try and save or reinstall any thing on the crashed hard drive
• Remove the crashed hard drive from the machine and connect it to another healthy system as a secondary drive and run Disk Doctors Windows Data Recovery Software

To recover data from crashed Windows hard drive follow these simple steps with Disk Doctors Windows Data Recovery Software.

Step 1: Install Disk Doctors Windows Data Recovery Software and run the application by double clicking the icon on the desktop or run it from the programs list from the Start menu. This will launch the application main window as shown in Figure a.

Figure a: Program Main Window

  
Step 2: Select ‘Recover your Data’ option from the ‘Wizard window’ and click on ‘Next’ button to continue (See Figure b).

Figure b: Select Appropriate Option

As you click the ‘Next’ button, a window will be displayed to select the disk from which you wish to recover your data (see Figure ‘c’).

Figure c: Select source disk

     
Step 3: Select a source drive and the processing mode to process the drive. The software provides two processing modes: Display default partitions and Search for lost partitions. By default the processing mode is set to ‘Display default partitions’. As you click ‘Next’ button, the application analyses the drive and lists all the found partitions in the partition table as shown in Figure ‘d’.

Figure d: Partition Table

 
Step 4: Select a partition for processing and click Finish button. The application processes the partition and displays the found files and folders in a tree structure as shown in Figure ‘e’.

Figure e: Found Files and Folders

     
Step 5: After scanning process completes a tree of found files and folders is created. You can preview the file before it could be recovered. To preview the file, right click on the file whose preview is to be seen and select Preview option. This will show the preview of the selected file as shown in Figure ‘f’

Figure f: Preview

Note: Other than image files all the other files would be displayed in ASCII form

   
Step 6: After you find the file you wish to recover, the only task left in recovery process is to recover it to a safe destination location.

If you want to recover whole tree structure formed, click root folder to mark whole data and click on ‘Save All’ option on the tool bar or button from the tools menu. As soon as you click on ‘Save all’ button, a window to select destination location is displayed as shown in Figure ‘g’.

Figure g: Save data

 
Step 7: Select a logical drive in your local disk where you wish to save the data. Specify the file type you wish to ignore (file filter) while saving process and Click OK. Make sure you do not save data to the same location from which you are recovering it.

You can now access the recovered data as it was never lost before.

A common misconception is that once you delete a file from the Recycle Bin it has been erased forever, and it is no longer present on the drive. Fortunately when you empty the Recycle Bin, Windows does not actually delete the file instead the space that the file occupied has been freed up and is listed as reuse space. If the system needs the space that this file occupies then the file may be overwritten. If this does not take place then the file in question can still be recovered with Disk Doctors Undelete Software at any time.

Disk Doctors Undelete Software is the most trusted, proven to work and won’t harm your computer. It recovers the deleted files in just 3 simple steps, Scan – Select File – Recover. This powerful program scours your hard drive for deleted files from your recycle bin (or anywhere else for that matter) and then brings them back to life.

How to recover files deleted from Recycle Bin with Disk Doctors Undelete

Step 1: Download and install Disk Doctors Undelete. Run the application and select the drive to search and click Next (See Figure a).

Caution: Never install Disk Doctors Undelete on the drive from which you want to recover data, also never save any data on the same drive from which you are recovering data.

Install the software to any another partition or computer, which is healthy system and has the best of hardware components, then attach the drive you want to recover as a slave to this machine and then proceed ahead recovering the data.

Figure a: Select the drive for search

If the drive you are looking for is not listed in the list of drives, Refresh Drives button will be helpful to detect the most recently attached drive and would list it in the list of physical drives.

  
Step 2: When the ‘Next’ button is pressed the scan is commenced and the next wizard screen will display a lists of all the found files and folders in a tree format under a Root folder as shown in Figure b.

Figure b: Tree Format of the found files and folders

 
Step 3: To recover files, select the file/folder you wish to recover or simply select the root folder to select all the found files and click Save. A window will appear asking to select destination location to restore recovered data (See Figure c).

Figure c: Saving the recovered data

If you choose to save data to local drive and specify the file types you wish to ignore during restoration process, check if you want the data to be saved in compressed form and click OK. Now the program starts saving the data to selected destination location of your choice.

After the saving is complete a message will popup intimating the same. All the data will be restored in a new folder by name “UndeleteX “. You can now access your recovered data as before.

IMPORTANT Note: Saving files to the partition or drive from where you are recovering data, for it may result in overwriting of data, and would result in permanent data loss.

So, if you have deleted files from Recycle Bin it is not hard to recover those deleted files with Disk Doctors Undelete.

Irrespective of the Windows operating system you use, files purposely or mistakenly deleted from Windows are recoverable using a powerful program from Disk Doctors. This program is Disk Doctors Undelete. The software will recover deleted data from your locally connected disks in just few simple steps.

Follow the below steps to recover files:

Step 1: Launch Disk Doctor’s Undelete from the Programs list in the Start menu or by double clicking the application shortcut from the desktop. The program Main Window will appear as below (See Figure a).

Figure a: Program Main Window

Step 2: In the main window the program will display all the logical drives. Select the drive containing the deleted data you wish to recover and click (see Figure b).

NOTE: If your drive is not listed in the list of drives, then click . This will detect the most recently attached drive and would list it in the list of physical drives.

Figure b: Select the drive to recover deleted files

The program will now scan the selected drive for deleted data and lists all the found files and folders in a tree format under a Root folder as shown in Figure c.

Figure c: Tree Format of the found files and folders

Step 3: Once you have found the files you had deleted the next step is to restore them to a safe location. To recover the file, select the file/folder you wish to recover or simply select the root folder to select all the found files and click .

NOTE: You can use .to locate the file you wish to restore and .option, which can be used after Find option, to locate already found file in other locations, present if any, in the big tree structure formed.

Step 4: After you click the Save button, a window will popup to select destination location to restore recovered data (See Figure d).

Figure d: Select Destination Location

Disk Doctors Undelete includes two options to save the recovered data.

• Save data to local drive
• Burn data to CD/DVD

If you choose to save data to local drive and specify the file types you wish to ignore during restoration process, check if you want the data to be saved in compressed form and click OK. Now the program starts saving the data to selected destination location of your choice.

After the saving is complete a message will popup intimating the same. All the data will be restored in a new folder by name “UndeleteX “. You can now access your recovered data as before.

CAUTION: Do not save the recovered data to the drive from which data is being recovered.

If you choose the Burn data to CD/DVD option and specify the file types you wish to ignore during restoration process, check if you want the data to be saved in compressed form and click OK. Select a burning device on which you want to burn the data and select drive to be used for temporary cache. This space will be used as a temporary cache when burning large data. Now the program starts to write your recovered data to a CD / DVD.

Finally Disk Doctors Undelete will inform you that the file recovery is complete! Open the destination folder to check the recovered files, or go back to the file list to recover more files.