The best way to protect your files against accidental damages is to keep a backup copy either on your local hard disks or remotely using a cloud backup service. If you regularly make a backup of your important files, then even if something happens to your local files, you can always recover them from the backup. But if you have have no backup and have accidentally deleted your files, then there is still some hope that the contents of the deleted files are still on your hard disk. Such deleted files can be recovered using special tools like Restoration. Restoration is a simple tool that can help you recover the deleted files from your hard disk, memory cards, USB sticks or other portable drives. It works on both the FAT and NTFS file systems. It also has a reverse function – to delete files permanently without any chance of recovery.
You can download Restoration from the personal website of Brian Kato. The downloaded file is a ZIP archive which contains the portable Restoration program. The program has to be run with administrative privileges so that it can access the hard disk sectors. In Windows Vista and later versions, you have to right-click on Restoration.exe and select Run as administrator in order to launch this program.
The Restoration program has a very simple and classic interface. You have to select a target disk drive letter from the drop-down menu, optionally type in the partial file name of the file you are looking for and then click on the Search Deleted Files button. It will populate the list with all the found deleted files that can be recovered. In order to recover one or more files, you can select them and click on the Restore by Copying button and choose a destination folder.
The Restoration program also has a function that allows you to delete the files permanently. You can access this function by selecting Others → Delete Completely from the menubar. After a confirmation dialog box, it will overwrite all the free sectors with random data – effectively removing all the deleted files and making them irrecoverable.
Conclusion: The Restoration program can help you easily restore your deleted files in a few seconds. It works both with the FAT and NTFS file systems. It can also assist you in overwriting the free space on your hard disk, making the deleted file completely irrecoverable.
You can download Restoration from http://www3.telus.net/mikebike/Restoration.zip.