Have you deleted an important file by accident and want it back desperately? Do not worry, FreeRecover is here to rescue. FreeRecover is a free and open source software that can help you recover your deleted files back. It works only on NTFS partitions. If you have Windows Vista and 7, then you do have NTFS partitions. Even if you have Windows XP, then most possibly you have NTFS partitions. FreeRecover allows you to search though and preview deleted files to find lost data. It also gives you an estimate of the integrity of the deleted files – indicating the probability of recovering the data from a file. It also shows the original file paths of the deleted files and thus makes it easy for you to search for deleted files in a particular folder.
You can download FreeRecover from the sourceForge web site. The download is available in form of a standalone portable application which is great as you do not have to install anything on your system. You can keep this program on your USB key as well and use on any computer you want. After you have downloaded the program, run it by double-clicking on the FreeRecover.exe file.
The user interface of FreeRecover is pretty staightforward and easy to use. You have to select a target disk partition from where you want to retrive the deleted files. Then you can choose to get the full paths of the found files and an estimate of their integrity level. Next click on the Search button to start the scanning process. The scanning for deleted files would take only a short time and you would see a list of all the found files.
Now you can go through the found files and check their content by clicking on them. The content preview of the currently selected file in the list would be automatically displayed in the lower pane of FreeRecover. You should note that FreeRecover only displays the images and plain text format in the preview. So if you are looking for a Microsoft Word file, then do not expect to see the Word document but its inner data which might appear like gibberish to you.
If you want to save some files that you have found, then place a checkmark in the checkboxes shown in front of them and click on the large Recover Files button in the lower-right corner of the window. FreeRecover would ask you to choose a destination folder where you want to save the files and finally show you a message that the selected files were saved successfully.
FreeRecover is an open-source, light-weight, easy to use and very fast file recovery software. Although it does not work on non-NTFS drives, but who uses them these days anyway? FreeRecover is portable application which makes it an ideal tool for your USB key. So if you have deleted some important files that you want to have back, then you can try FreeRecover. You can download it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/freerecover/.