From Jeremy: I thought I would share this excellent post from Chip Kohrman Founder of Telesaur.com about how to get back those deleted files.  Chip is someone that I met some time ago via Social Media.  He’s a great resource for tech and especially telework info.  Enjoy!

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A friend of mine came back from vacation last summer empty handed. As we settled down in front of his laptop for a long slide presentation, he discovered that his camera’s memory card was completely empty. No photos! Despite my hidden relief for not having to sit through a week’s documentation of “this is me by the _______,” I did feel sorry for the guy, and offered to see what I could do to recover the missing photos. He laughed, wondering how it was that I could retrace his steps and take all of the photos again. At this point, I realized that I was about to become a magician in his eyes. I promised nothing, but said that I’d do my best.

I took the memory card home with me. I already had plenty of experience recovering deleted files from hard drives and other storage devices. Anyone who has a habit of hitting Shift Delete to skip the recycling bin on your computer probably knows what I mean. Efficiency has its price, and my fingers have occasionally been faster than my brain. However, “permanently deleted” in the computer world is only true if you actually write over the space on the storage where the file was located. In other words, when a file is “deleted,” the reference to the file is the only thing that is gone. Unless you go fill up the entire storage device after deleting a file, chances are high that your file is still on the disk.

If your photos are missing, if you accidentally deleted something, or perhaps, if you have a three year old that knows how to unlock your desktop and remove “My Documents” from your system, try the following:

* Stop saving to the device immediately

* If your three year old was involved, pick a better password

* Plug in a flash drive (this can’t be the same device with your missing files)

* Download a free file restoration utility, like Restorator, and save it to the flash drive

I’ve used Restorator successfully many times, and I’ll walk you through the steps:

Extract the files you downloaded

The downloaded file is called “REST2514.EXE.” It’s a self-extracting archive, meaning if you double-click on it, it will ask you where you want to save its contents. Make sure you browse to the flash drive you plugged in. Click “Unzip” and 4 files will be extracted to the location you selected.

Run Restoration

There’s no need to install Restoration. It’s completely portable, and doesn’t change anything on your computer. (I could have run Restoration right there at my friend’s house… but then, I wouldn’t look like a magician later, would I?) Just browse to the location you saved the files on your flash drive, and double-click “

Select the storage device containing the missing files.

Type in what you’re looking for. You can leave this blank, but it’s faster if you can provide some information about the files you’re looking for (ie. filename, file extension, etc).

Click “Search Deleted Files” and cross your fingers for the results. With any luck, the missing files will start to be listed.

Say something out loud, like, “Abracadabra,” or “A la peanut butter sandwiches.”

Click, “Restore by Copying” and save the files to the flash drive.

Restoration worked for my friend’s situation. There are a few other free file restoration apps out there, and if none of these work, there are plenty of commercial options to explore. However, Restoration is only 229 KB in size, and handy to have on hand when you’re in a pinch. It’s a great utility for your mobile toolbox. Make some magic!

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Chip Kohrman is the Founder of Telesaur (http://www.telesaur.com) who’s motto is “Helping people find and do telework”.  Chip also has a great blog at http://www.telesaur.com/blog.  You can also follow him on Twitter (@telesaur).