Have you ever accidentally deleted your files and felt desperate to get it back failed to do so and asked why are some deleted files not recoverable? Well, this article will discuss the answer which contains the reason why some of the deleted files are unable to be recovered. Let’s check it out!

What happens when you delete a data

Do you think that when you delete a data, that data is instantly gone? Well, unfortunately, that one is incorrect since an action to delete a file in a computer is actually just an act to remove the direction to the data instead exactly removing the data in a single click. The data will only be marked as free by the program of the computer, and then the data will be overwritten in the end. This can be avoided by not making too many writing activities on the drive which contains the deleted data in there. Well, try not to modify the data in the driver too much!

How to prevent the deleted data from being overwritten

As you can read in the previous paragraph, the key is not to do an excessive amount of writing in the drive you use to store the deleted data, but what actually does it mean, and why are some deleted files not recoverable? Data writing is any activities that involve any kind of modification in the drive, such as saving new files, installing software, or, obviously, formatting the drive. If you do less amount of writing activities using the drive, the chance to save the data is bigger.

The example of this is if you deleted a photo that you save in the drive, and then, for some reasons, you left the driver without any touch at all for quite a long time, then decided that you want that photo back into the driver so you can see it. You opened a file recovery program, and then, after a short while, the photo is back inside your driver since there are not much writing activities has done using the driver. The deleted photo had not been overwritten by the driver, so, the chance to recover it is pretty bright and easy to do.

What happens if you write the drive too often

Of course, the example above is way too imaginary to be true since no one would want to leave a good driver for a long amount of time, right? Well, let’s imagine a more realistic example and why are some deleted files not recoverable? You deleted a photo, and everything happens normally since you use your computer in a normal way, which is downloading a new video, updating the software, or editing some photos. Well, since those are a large number of activities, they involve a large number of writing activities as well. Because of those activities, the data of the deleted photo will definitely be overwritten by the program, and eventually, the photo is gone for good.  The deleted files are not recoverable since it has been overwritten by new data.

However, the chance of whether a file is recoverable or not actually also depends on several things. Some of the things are the size of the driver, the number of writing activities you do, and the size of the file that is deleted. Those affect the chance of whether a file is recoverable or not. But generally, the bigger the size of a deleted file, the shorter time available that you can use to recover it. The reason for this is that a big file often takes a gigantic amount of the slot available in your drive, which makes the chance of it being overwritten way bigger than a smaller file.

Using file recovery software

On paper, using software to assist you in recovering the accidentally deleted file looks quite promising, but is it actually so? Well, using file recovery software such as these reviewed by Computer Fixperts could actually recover some of the files, but it is questionable whether it could recover the whole file that you wish to recover. Although that sounds a bit sour, actually, it is absolutely true.

The answer to why file recovery software is often unable to recover a file in an intact condition is because of file fragmentation. File fragmentation always happens in any drive, even the most sophisticated one, since a driver is not always able to write its data in a perfect order. If the file is divisible, then the pieces will not always be written in an orderly manner. Instead, it is very likely that they will be written to the parts of the media that are randomly distributed by the driver, which is file fragmentation.

The size of a file does not always reflect the number of pieces constructing it. Well, it might look small, but it might be heavily fragmented as well. A music file which only takes 2 MB of size might be heavily fragmented and distributed all over inside the drive. Well, if the music is deleted and the 15% of the data has been overwritten by a newly downloaded file, it is highly probable that it will become corrupted when you attempt to recover it. So, the reason why a file is not recoverable by file recovery software is how fragmented the file is.

Conclusion

It is not easy to determine whether a file can be recovered or not after it has been deleted. It turns out that the chance to recover a deleted file depends on several factors. If the file is too big, it somewhat takes a lot of more effort to recover it since it is more difficult. You can also use file recovery software, but the success rate now depends on how fragmented the file is since a heavily fragmented file proves to be more difficult to recover due to the amount of fragment the file recovery software needs to locate, arrange, and recover. Well, those are the answers to the question which asks why are some deleted files not recoverable?