Recuva Data Recovery Software

Data: any information that resides on ones computer. Well, how is it stored on the computer? Data, such as word documents, pictures, and music all have multiple copies of themselves on the hard drive. But, Windows only allows you to see one copy (the file that was designated to be the primary file when the file was created). So, what happens when you delete something? Well, the primary file is deleted, and is removed from the Windows structure. Searching or indexing Windows will not bring that file back (once it is deleted from the Recycle Bin). But, beneath/hidden behind Windows resides the Shadow copies. These are the files which can be recovered. However, the shadow copies only exist until they are written over. This means, if you delete something and then go and start downloading and installing huge programs (like Office or Photoshop), chances are the file will be overwritten. So, you deleted an important file. What do you do?

Data recovery is normally a very expensive process, but for the simple stuff there’s a program that works wonders (ONLY if you haven’t written over the data already. For that you’ll need to see a Data Recovery specialist). Here’s the solution. Recuva file recovery software from a great company called Piriform (They also make CCleaner and Defraggler which will also be mentioned in a future posts as there software is great freeware). If you’d like to try it out or obtain more information about the product check out there link here, http://www.piriform.com/recuva.
My personal experience with this product was fantastic. I used an old SD card (common digital camera memory chip) I had around the house and put an image on it and deleted it.  I started up the program selected the option for recovering images found that picture no problem (I was very impressed). Repeated the same process again with a flash drive and an MP3 and had same result, found it again! Now  the down fall of the product came in once I wrote over the data.  The file wasn’t recovered at all. However, this task is a difficult one for any data recovery software. So, it really isn’t a major down fall since software you’ll pay $1000’s for will give you the same results if not worse.  So those are the ups and downs of Recuva, a highly recommended and great piece of software to have.