Locating a lost file can be easily compared to the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. The average hard drive has enough room to hold around one million messages or similar text files. So where can that one file that has suddenly disappeared be? Usually it is right where you left it. What does this mean? When a file is accidentally deleted all that happens is that the space where the file was is marked as empty. The data in that file is still encoded onto the hard disk. But to rescue that data we must use a third party file recovery program that is designed to recognized the file structure of our lost information and retrieve it.

For example supposing we need file recovery of an essay we wrote and saved using Microsoft Word. That file would have used a .doc extension. A quality third party file recovery tool that will recognize the data in the spot marked empty as having been created using Microsoft Word. Once recognized, the extension and file name are restored thus making the dead lost file once again active. So how do we find a needle in a haystack…with a very powerful magnet and in the case of a lost file, with a very powerful file recovery tool.