How to Recover Lost Files after System Restore

"I haven't meant to restore my computer system, for I always doubt 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 were 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 recover files after system restore?"

Before introducing solutions, let's talk about 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 to recover files after system restore on Windows or Mac?

"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", many people say like this after losing files after system restore. Therefore, the best and cheapest way to prevent your files losing is to do backups. Well, when the disaster strikes and there is no backup, you are not at the end. There is still a way to get them back.

A data recovery after system restore can do it. 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. So you still have a chance to retrieve the lost files with data recovery tools as long as the space are still marked as free space, but not occupied by new files.

There is much data recovery software on the current market, so choosing the appropriate data recovery software after system restore is important. If you are still looking for one, humbly suggest you with the Wondershare Data Recovery, or Wondershare Data Recovery for Mac if you are using Mac OS X. It's 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. While retrieving your lost files, it won't cause any further damage to your previous data.

3 steps to recover files lost after system restore

1. Launch the program and choose Raw Recovery (Switch to the Standard Mode if you are using the Windows version.).
2. Select the partition where you lost your files after system restore, and start to scan.
3. After the scan, preview and check the recoverable files and click to recover.

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 Time Freeze. It servers 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.