Help! How do I recover deleted files?

Hi all.

What is the best free program to recover deleted files from an external HDD?
The external HDD was encrypted by Truecrypt and I deleted a large amount of data that I now realise I need.
As the data was roughly 40GB it couldn't fit into the recyle bin and it was "permanently deleted". Will it be possible to recover the data?

I was trying to format my brothers laptop to reinstall Windows and there wasn't enough space on the external HDD to move all of his data onto it, so I had to delete the old backup of his laptop from the external HDD.
I deleted the backup data, then started to make a new backup and the laptop HDD died half way through...
So I have now lost all the data from the laptop and also the backup from the external HDD.
So it looks like the only way for me to recover the data is to somehow get it back from the dead HDD, which is probably unlikely, or recover the data from the encrypted external HDD.

What a headache!

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

I use this program http://www.pcinspector.de/default.htm?Language=1

 

Please try GetDataBack from http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

 

Thanks.

I have heard of GetDataBack before so I just installed it but I am not sure if it is actually scanning or not.

I selected the drive I wanted to scan and clicked next and I am now at this stage;

http://i33.tinypic.com/11uvy4w.jpg

How do I know if it's actually scanning or not?
I don't hear much HDD activity and I would have thought that the program would show a progress bar or something.

 

I use Recuva. It's good and it's free!

 

Recuva and Pandora Recovery.

 

Sorry for the late answer ChrisBUK, i`m not really sure how the scanning process worked because i havn`t used the application in a long time but i recall there was some sort of progress bar showing you the actual scanning process

So did you have any luck recovering with this or any other app for the deleted files?

 

Thanks for the replies.

I managed to get GetDataBack working properly but it doesn't look like it managed to recover the 50-60GB or so of deleted files.
I don't know if it's because the drive is encrypted or if the data was permanently deleted or not.
I also noticed you can't copy recovered files using GetDataBack without buying the full version anyway, which costs something like 90 euros!

I tried Recuva which also hasn't been able to find the 50-60GB of lost data.

Thanks anyway.

 

try r-studio ,which i found out to be the gem of the lot..

 

The probability of recover will depend on when the data has been deleted and the usage of a drive - how often you delete/write files on that drive, that is. If it is a recent delete, and you didn't write a large amount of data on that same drive/partition (so didn't overwrite the space previously used by your deleted data), then your odds of recovering are fairly high. (Jeez, I hope I said this well...)

I will second this, r-studio is the best in this field. However, the best of these tools are payware, not very affordable, and I would say, for the good reason. You get what you pay for.