That File You Deleted Is Not Erased

An attorney may believe that it's clever to press SHIFT + DELETE when removing a file from his hard drive. This old Windows trick will delete a file without sending it to the Recycle Bin. It appears as though it's completely wiped out and can't be recovered. However this is not necessarily the case. Even after a file has been emptied from the Recycle Bin it is still possible to get it back. Windows merely removes the reference to the file from the Master File Table. The file is now marked as one which can be overwritten when space is needed on the hard drive. If this hasn't happened yet you can use software like Tokiwa's Data Recovery to get the file back. Tokiwa's application is free and available for download here: http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/DataRecovery_EN.zip . The application is very simple. You just enter the full or partial name of the deleted file and select the drive where it was originally saved. If the file doesn't turn up in the initial scan, you can try a deep scan, which will take much longer. The software developer says that it can recover files up to 4 GB. The program also includes an option to wipe the deleted file. When choosing the option to recover the file be sure to save it to a different location - not the folder it was originally deleted from. On an NTFS drive the deleted files may be referenced with a different name. Try searching for just the file extension as well.