Recover Deleted (Recycled) Data

Is there a way to actually find and recover deleted data on a HDD?



I pulled out my old (3-4 years since I used it) PC and the last time I used it I deleted almost every file on it.. it made me mad, so I deleted a bunch of stuff and bought a new PC haha.



Anyways, I've seen some programs that claim they can do it.. but I'd like to know if any are actually successful at it.



Freeware is my favorite option, but trialware without limits works as well

OK, I found a couple of programs that'll do the trick.. I didn't think I ever would!

However, when I save photos that it finds.. the majority of photos are un-viewable.. I get an error stating that the file is an unsupported format, or I haven't upgraded my picture viewer lately.

They were probably corrupted along the way.



Also, what program(s) did you use? I've looked into recovering files a few times, but I've never been impressed with the programs...



Did you find any that were freeware?

I've recovered files with freeware, I don't remember what the programs I've used were called though. They did work but it was all stuff I had just deleted, nothing had been deleted for more than about 10 minutes making it unlikely that any part of it got overwritten.



The drive could be a problem too, if it's on it's way out there could be bad sectors you are trying to recover data from.