Oh no, you accidentally deleted the pictures from your recent family vacation. And to add to your trouble, you had emptied the recycle bin to save some space on your hard drive. Computer manufacturers like to make you feel that emptying the recycle bin means deleting the files in it forever. What happens, though, is the system merely flags the particular files as deleted, and marks the space as unoccupied.
It also means that you can still read the data if you follow a specific technique for recovering deleted files. In fact, until a new file takes up the space, you will have a high chance of recovering those files.
There is a big difference between repairing physical damage of the hard drive and recovering partitions and deleted files. For example, if you find that suddenly your hard drive is smoking, rattling, shaking, or making noises, there is no software available that can help you repair it. You will need to take the hard drive out and find a service specializing in data recovery to repair it.
The first thing to do, immediately after recognizing that your files are missing, is to avoid writing any other information on your hard drive. After accidentally deleting files, the more you write on the hard drive, the less chance you have of recovering those files.
After deleting files, go to your recycle bin and see if by chance they are still in there. If you are lucky, and have not already emptied it, you will be able to restore those files easily.
Some computer protection programs such as Norton System Works, come with automatic backups. If you have one of these programs, you should check the help manual to find out how you can go about recovering files from the archives.
