How To Retrieve Lost Files After System Restore?

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I haven't meant to restore my PC system, for I always doubted whether my files could still be there. But one day as the virus attack, I had to do that. Lack of experience, I didn't back up my files, thus many of them have been lost. The files are really important for me, including my paper documents, precious videos, and the only photo taken with my best friend.

I had been upset for nearly a week. Approaching the net, I surprisingly found that not a few people have met this kind of problem. Then how to retrieve these lost files after system restore?
Before introducing solutions, I'd like to explain why we lose files after system restore.

Why We Lose Files after System Restore?

I. No backup

Some people are likely to save their files on the disk C without any backup. When the system restore is done, this disk would be formatted, the operating system erases all book-keeping information on the disk, and we will lose our files.

II. Misoperation

Dealing with the system restore, some people may accidently choose all the disks to be formatted, thus all the files on them would lose; some may mess up the partition table, and the data could not be properly read and written; or some may not understand the instructions very well and omit a few steps, lost their files.

III. Others

In the process of system restore, other factors like the severity of virus, the internal fault of hard disks, or the incompatibility of systems are all likely to lead our files lost. Some of them are evitable, while some are inevitable.

How We Keep Files after System Restore

Undoubtedly, the best and cheapest way to prevent your files lost is to do backup. If time could be called back, I would back up my files on a storage hard disk before restoring the system. Then after the restore was done, I could copy them to my PC at any moment I like, without worrying about losing them.

Since time past could not be called back again, how can we retrieve the lost files? For me, I successfully retrieved the lost files with data recovery software. After the files are lost, sometimes the data itself isn't deleted; just the area where the lost data was stored is now marked as free space for other new files to be written. So we can retrieve the lost files with data recovery tools.

There is much data recovery software on the current market, so choosing the appropriate one is important. Personally I used Wondershare data recovery software. It is professional recovery software, which understands the internals of the system used to store files on a disk (the file system) and uses this knowledge to locate the disk space that was occupied by a deleted file. 

Also notice that Wondershare give you a free trial to download.

While retrieving your lost files, it won't cause any further damage to your previous data. The RAW recovery, one of the four recovery modes, can deeply scan the computer to retrieve the lost files. Or if the problem lies in the partition table, you can use Partition Recovery to retrieve your lost files.

Tips: Back up Files before System Restore

Back up your files before system restore is the best and cheapest way to prevent your files lost. You can do that with a storage hard disk or professional backup software like Wondershare Time Shuttle. It serves as a professional system restore software which helps you restore system, remove PC problems and prevent data loss with the help of up to 1,000 restore points (snapshots) you created. Thus you won't bother retrieving lost files after the system restore done.