Recover files from emptied Recycle Bin

[natejj]

A friend accidentally emptied the Recycle bin, needs to recover a file or two. Google just gives me links to a bunch of software... I have no idea what is legit or not. Can anyone recommend a program that is legit/free?

[Tik-Tok]

Actual files, or photo's?

I use PC Inspector smart recovery just for photo's,

edit: eh, nevermind the other one, I forgot it was useless

[GQBalla]

see if he can restore his computer to a point before the file was deleted

[eblend]

get a Hiren's boot disk, boot off it and use Advance Recovery Professional or something like that, works like magic. Also if your friend want to have any chance to recover those files they should stop using the PC until they have the bootdisk to boot to, else those files can be overwritten with new ones and getting the lost files back gets a ton more complicated.

[chengj]

Lifehacker just covered this one. Voila:

http://lifehacker.com/5237503/five-best-free-data-recovery-tools

I have personally used Restoration and it works quite well (though not pretty and has a few shortcomings). By the sounds of that article though, there are a couple better ones. I would advise running them off of a separate drive or usb key. (avoid ANY writes to the wiped drive).

[Zero102]

Just wanted to emphasize even more that he should not be using the machine and should use some variety of live bootable media and an external drive to recover the data. This will minimize the risk that the area of the hard disk that the files were stored in will be re-used. Once this happens recovery is significantly more difficult and occasionally impossible.

I've used OnTrack with a good amount of success in the past, but it has been a while since I have needed to do this, perhaps there is better more recent software available, but OnTrack has always done well with me :)

[Mibz]

Undelete worked well for me once. I started using RecoverMyFiles and haven't needed to switch since.