How to use Disk Digger

Download Disk Digger (diskdigger.org). You don’t need to install it – just extract the contents of the .zip archive and run the .exe file. Remember that if you’ve already accidentally deleted some files, you shouldn’t download DiskDigger to the disk containing your lost files as it could overwrite your files and make it impossible to recover them. Ideally, download it before you actually need it.

Start DiskDigger. The opening screen shows all the disks, so select the one containing your deleted files and click on ‘Next’ three times. The disk will now be scanned and any deleted files will be listed – this could take some time. If your missing files are listed, continue to the next step. If not you could try altering some of the options in the earlier screens.

DiskDigger won’t be able to show correct filenames so, to help identify lost files, a preview option is provided. Select a file in the list at the left and choose either the ‘Preview’ (for photos) or the ‘First few bytes’ tag. Also useful for photographs is the ‘Thumbnail’ option in the ‘View’ menu which will show small images in the list.

When you’ve identified your lost file(s) select them in the list at the left and click on ‘Recover selected files…’. Next, select the device and folder where you want your files to be restored to (this must not be on the same physical drive as the lost file) and click on OK. The missing file(s) will be saved with automatically generated filenames, so you’ll need to rename them to their original names or something meaningful.