Steve asks us about a program called “Recuva”
Do you know anything about a program called “Recuva”? It’s supposed to rescue deleted files. Sounds a little suspect to me. Can you give us more info about it? Thanks. An avid reader, Steve.
Our Answer
Thanks, Steve. Yes, we’re familiar with Recuva. In fact a couple of years ago it was one of our freeware picks. It’s a good program and it works, but it’s important to know its limitations.
Here is how Recuva works: If you’ve deleted something and emptied your recycle bin the files you’ve deleted are not really gone. Most of them may be completely recoverable, if they have not been overwritten with other data. But, in order to retrieve deleted files which have been removed from your Recycle Bin, you need the right tools. That’s where a program like “Recuva” comes in handy. Recuva will scan your drives for files you’ve deleted and recover them – if they’re recoverable (i.e. they’ve not been overwritten with other data).
Keep this in mind: The more time that passes between the time you deleted the files and the time you attempt to recover them, the more unlikely it is you’ll be able to recover a deleted file. So it’s really essential if you deleted something really important that you don’t wait too long to attmept to recover it. A good rule to remember is to attempt to recover the files you’ve deleted by accident as soon as you realize what you’ve done.
Let’s say you took pictures of a birthday bash last Friday. And, tomorrow, you want show these pictures to some friends who were acting crazy at the party. But now you can’t find all those wonderful pictures. You panic. Someone deleted all of those wonderful birthday shots and emptied the recycle bin. Now you have to find those pictures somewhere. What you need is Recuva. Recuva will scan your hard drives and find all the files you’ve deleted that can be recovered (and even show you the ones you cannot recover unless you spend about a zillion dollars on professional recovery software).
“Recuva (pronounced “recover”) is a freeware Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!”
That’s what Recuva is and what it does. It’s not a program you’ll use every day or even every week. It’s one of those tools that you need to have in your toolbox at all times. Recuva is one of those tools that it’s better to have and not need than to need it and not have it.
Recuva is simple enough that even the newest computer user can figure it out. It’s still freeware. If you’re interested you can read more about and/or download Recuva here.