Can I recover permanently deleted files?

[axelknight]

These files were ransomwared in late 2016 to early 2017. Just found out about it last week. It was my dad's life story, and he had a major brain injury shortly after, so he can't tell me anything about it. I assume he got pissed off, put the locked files in the recycle bin, and emptied it. I've always heard that you can't completely delete a file off of a computer, and there's a way to recover permanently deleted files. Does anyone have any experience with this? Thank you.

 

[Bree]

I've always heard that you can't completely delete a file off of a computer, and there's a way to recover permanently deleted files.

Yes, when a file is deleted the data isn't wiped from the disk, just the sectors it is written to will be marked as free to be reused.

Data can be recovered, but only if those sectors haven't been written to yet. The more the PC has been used after deletion, the less chance there is to recover any data.

There's a lot of data recovery software available. Try Recuva...

Download Recuva | Recover deleted files, free!

...or 'KickAss Undelete'.

Kickass Undelete - a free, open source file recovery tool for Windows