Recovery Tips and Tricks

DO NOT WRITE ANYTHING ONTO THE DRIVE THAT CONTAINS YOUR IMPORTANT DELETED DATA!

When you install software, you write data onto the disk. This can destroy your deleted data. Even if you install data recovery software, install it to a different logical drive on your PC.
If you have only one logical drive, physically remove the hard drive from the computer and install it as a second logical drive on another computer where data recovery software has already been installed.

DO NOT SAVE RECOVERED DATA ONTO THE SAME DRIVE THAT CONTAINS THE LOST OR DAMAGED DATA!

When saving recovered data, you are writing records to the file table. If you write these records to the same drive that contains the damaged data, you are destroying the file table records that you are trying to recover. At the same time, you may be destroying the file table records for other deleted entries.
It is best to save recovered data onto another logical, removable, network or floppy drive.

CREATE A DISK IMAGE IF YOU HAVE AN EXTRA HARD DRIVE, OR OTHER LOGICAL DRIVES THAT ARE BIG ENOUGH!

A Disk Image is a single file that stores all the data from your logical drive or physical device as a mirror image. Having a Disk Image can be useful when you want to back up the contents of the whole drive, and restore it or work with it later.
Before you start recovering deleted files, it may be a good idea to create a Disk Image for the one drive in question, provided you have enough space on another drive. If you suspect there will be a hard drive failure or have inadvertently further damaged files while recovering (for example, recovering them onto the same drive and destroying the data), you will be able to recover these damaged files and folders from the Disk Image that you have wisely created.