Preventing Deleted Files From Being Recovered
Read More: How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally.
Recuva and other utilities can scan a hard drive for deleted files and allow you to recover them.
Recuva, made by the developers of CCleaner, is a good option.
Windows doesn’t include a built-in tool that scans your hard drive for deleted files, but there are a wide variety of third-party tools that do this. If you try to recover a file by installing a file-recovery program on the same hard drive, the installation process and normal use of the hard drive can overwrite the file.
Image Credit: Matt Rudge on Flickr Why Deleted Files Aren’t Erased Immediately Note that this doesn’t apply to solid-state drives (SSDs) – see below for why. If the file has been partially overwritten, the file recovery program can only recover part of the data. A file recovery program can scan a hard drive for these deleted files and restore them. However, until Windows actually writes new data over the sectors containing the contents of the file, the file is still recoverable.
From the file system’s point of view, the file is no longer present on your hard drive and the sectors containing its data are considered free space. When you delete a file, Windows removes the pointer and marks the sectors containing the file’s data as available.