It is funny that with all discussion of virus and malware threats to files and drives that the biggest cause of files being lost is often overlooked. That is of course, human error. It seems everyone from time to time absent mindedly clicks on delete instead of save and then proceeds to panic as to how to recover their lost files.
Fortunately there are available powerful data recovery tools that can scan an entire hard drive in minutes to locate and restore accidentally deleted files. A few features to look for in a better data recovery program are:
An easy to understand graphic user interface, a wizard style control system, and a working preview screen. I mention the latter because many data recovery programs claim to preview files but only present a few file formats. Another very important feature is that when files are recovered they must be presented with the original file name intact. It is amazing how many supposed data recovery programs only return a generic list of files by number.