Isn’t it really annoying when you delete files in order to make room on your hard drive, and you notice that until they’re removed from the Recycle Bin, the free space is the same?

Unless you use the Shift+Delete combination, or remove the files from the Recycle Bin you will not get a bigger amount of free space.

But it's even more annoying when you accidentally delete a file that you need, and you use the permanently delete function. What’s to be done in that situation? Well, there’s no need to worry, because there are data recovery programs that can undelete files, even if you’ve formatted your hard drive.

Recover My Files is a program that will help you scan your hard drive for deleted files, and recover them.

Undelete it!

When running it you will get assistance from a wizard which helps you choose the action that suits you best.

You can select to perform a Fast file search, Complete file search, Fast format recovery or Complete format recovery operation.

The Fast file search will scan your disk for recently deleted files and folders, and temporary files. It takes some time to complete, but the results match the effort.

If you want to get better performance out of the program, you can use the Complete file search feature. This will add a cluster level search to your operation, and will recover lost files as well. Of course, since the thoroughness of this action is increased, it will take it some time to complete, but at least you’ll know that you’ll find that accidentally deleted file you’ve desperately been looking for.

If you’ve formatted your hard drive, there’s no need to panic: "Recover my files" can recover your files in this case too! You can use the Fast format recover feature; just like the fast file recovery feature, this one will not provide accurate results, but you can give it a go, and if you’re lucky enough to find your file with this method, you’ve just saved some time.

The "Complete format recover" feature is more time consuming, but the chances that you will recover your data significantly increase. The main reason for the time issue with this feature isn’t the fact that the program is slow, but the fact that the number of files that are found is larger, and, evidently, it takes a lot more to gather them all.

With such a big file list you will need an assistant that will help you select the one that you’ve been searching for. More often than not, the file names are altered, and have a sequential structure, giving you no clue as to what their content might be.

For this purpose you can sort the list by name, size, type and so on; also, there’s a preview function which will enable you to get a glance at your files (images, text, xml, etc.). If you end up having to sort out between many files, you can apply filters and keep only the files that meet the criteria. You can filter by extension, size, creation date, or a keyword, allowing you to create customized queries (the program offers some tricks about how to get an accurate result, such as typing "*" to match any number, or "?" to match anything).

Recovering your files is done by selecting the ones that you want, and selecting the "save files" option from the program toolbar or from the main menu. If you don’t have enough hard disk space, you can burn them directly to a CD or DVD.

You can also export the file list as a CSV file, allowing you to create reports with the found files.

A nice feature is the fact that you can select file types that you want to search for. This will reduce the time it takes for the program to find them, but the program will scan the whole hard disk anyway, so don’t expect to see miracles; the results list will be more relevant, though. Also, you can have "Recover my files" search your disk at cluster level, or advance to the sector level, for better results.

As the producer states, when recovering files using the complete format recovery it’s not recommended that you select more than 5 file types (and you should not search for multimedia files either, unless you really need to, because this will take much more time). If you really need to find all your lost files, you should be prepared for a long wait (but you can always start a new search and let the computer do its job while you mind other business).

If you can’t find your way with the features and program functions, you can take a look at the help menu, and your issues will certainly be cleared out: it has step-by-step instructions for every section of the program, providing screenshots for the most important ones.

The Good

You will feel like a God when working with Recover My Files; you won’t have any trouble adapting to it, and the search time is not bad. The interface is simple in design, and it offers good functionality.

The Bad

The recovery procedure could take quite some time for bigger capacity hard drives, and if you should select too many file types to be searched, then you could get stuck for a while. Also, this version doesn’t allow you to save files, and is limited to search and preview only.

The Truth

Searching for deleted files is easy, and takes little time. The only painstaking operation is the Complete format recovery; even though it may take some time to find files when searching for all the available types, the program does not lock your computer; this means that you can simply create a new search, get busy with your usual activities, and check the found files list when the program is done. Files cannot be saved, but for text associated ones the preview option will do just fine. Try the shareware version, and have some fun while recovering!

Check out the screenshots below to get a glance at the program in action:

Installing:


Working with the program: