This is a problem that professionals and home users will experience alike, so weather it’s your latest work project or your precious family photos and videos; we’re all at risk of this happening to us. Having a contingency in place for when the inevitable does happen will save you a whole lot of grief and worry. There are a couple of recovery methods you can try yourself, but if they don’t work you’re going to need some specialist software to recover your data – luckily these options are readily available, inexpensive and not difficult to use.

When data becomes lost, corrupted or deleted it’s still possible to recover it as it isn’t completely gone. The data will be recoverable if that part of the drive has not been overwritten by newer data, so if the loss has happened relatively recently then you shouldn’t have trouble recovering it. How to recover your lost files There are a couple of fixes you can try before you have to start thinking about more advanced software. These are nice and simple, but could still be the answer you’re looking for. Check your recycle bin You’ll be able to find the recycle bin on your desktop or by searching for it on your computer. Open it up and have a look at the files inside. These files are waiting to be recycled, which will happen periodically or manually depending on how you have it set up. Have a look through the files in here, and if you find what you’re looking for, right click on the file(s) and hit ‘Restore’.

Search your PC If you know what the file is called then you can search for it on your PC. If you’re on Windows 10, type the name of the file into the search box at the bottom left of your screen. This will search the available files on your PC for your entry, and show you the location of the file if it does find anything. If you’re sure that the files have been lost, then stop using your computer for other tasks (this will minimise the risk of your lost data being overwritten by new data as your PC works) and immediately download some trusted data recovery software.

Wondershare has developed the Recoverit software for just these situations. Use Recoverit by Wondershare to recover your lost data Available for both Windows and Mac, Recoverit allows you to recover data from any device while supporting more than 550 different types of data formats. Making use of its powerful data-analyser engine, Recoverit uses an advanced deep-scan algorithm to search through your storage to bring back more than 96% of your lost data. Recoverit can retrieve data lost in formatted hard drives, raw hard drives and even in lost or resized partitions and can perform full data recover on almost any device.

The program is powerful but easy to use, with an intuitive interface that will allow you to scan and retrieve your files in moments. Recoverit is completely free to download, and will let you recover 100MB of files on their standard version. Recovering more files will require an upgrade to Recoverit Pro ( $39.95), and if you need to recover files from a computer that has crashed completely, Recoverit Ultimate ( $59.95) contains a bootable media program to help you do just that.

How to prevent data loss on your PC in future The best way to avoid this happening in future is to employ a few preventative measures.

Make sure you save your data frequently if you’re working on itBack up your sensitive data by keeping a copy of it on The Cloud or an external hard drive (or both).Purchase some anti-virus software to give yourself extra protection against any malicious software.

Wondershare is the creator of Recoverit and hs been developing powerful, easy-to-use software solutions for a wide range of common problems since 2003. With over 5 million users of Recoverit alone, Wondershare has its products in over 160 countries across the globe. Its outstanding free tech support is available 24/7 and any products come with a 7 day money back guarantee. Wondershare also offers Filmora as their intuitive and powerful video editing tool, pdfElement which allows you to annotate and edit PDF files quickly and easily, and finally dr.fone as their Smartphone data recovery tool for both iOS and Android.

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