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How to recover deleted files in Windows using System Restore

While Windows have gone to lengths protecting your data from a lot of bad elements like worms, viruses, crashes and in fact, even from you, there are still times when Windows can only do so much. There are lots of incidents that files — important files — gets deleted still. Despite the warnings and safeguards of the Recycle Bin, it still gets deleted, the forums are pregnant with horror stories of users of losing files because of accidental deletion and entire industries have sprung up just so you could recover data on the hard drive.

I’m assuming that you’ve already tried all the recycle bin tips and tricks; and didn’t work, that is why you googled up and probably landed here. In this post, we’ll talk about how to use System restore capabilities of Windows to resurrect a file.

Hard drive data recovery is becoming a standard feature of Operating systems, Mac OSX has TimeMachine, Some editions of Windows Vista, and the now on beta, Windows 7 have an improved System Restore.

Restoration of accidentally deleted files is probably not one of the primary aim of those who designed it, but it can do the job.

Check to see if System protection is turned on, click the start button, on the “search” field, type “System protection”, that will lead you to settings window of System protection, make sure the setting is “on”. Once it’s turned on, you can then create restore points in your computer. Restore points are snapshots of your system and files, when you create a restore point for the first time, you are baselining your system, if something is messed up, you can always go back to the baseline. When you add files and install new software, you can create other restore points, you can keep old restore points as well; that way, you can come back to any restore point you have created in the past. Restore points do not make a copy of all of your files and settings, you will run out of disk space easily if that was the case, instead they store only deltas (differences between the last restore point and the snapshot of your system right now), this way, it doesn’t consume a lot of disk space.

Example on how to recover files using System restore

If you have accidentally deleted a file, or folder, try your luck if you can restore it using “restore” options.

1. Open my computer, if you the exact folder where you think the file was, go there.
2. Once you’ve reached the folder, right-click on it, then select “properties” click “Previous versions”.
3. You will see your various restore points you’ve created (or Windows have created) in the past. You can view the contents of a restore point before you actually restore it.
4. Just double click any of the restore point, then you can navigate it normally like you would navigate My Computer.
5. Once you found the file you’re looking for, Click the restore button.

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