Apart from various other features, Windows 7 enables its users to recover lost, deleted, or corrupt files, even if they do not have their backup. This is possible as Windows 7 provides a restore feature called 'Previous Versions'. With this feature, previous versions of your files and folders are created by Microsoft Windows 7 automatically, and hence you can restore your deleted data from there. You can also call it as shadow copies of your files. However, to make your Windows 7 create previous versions of your files and folders, you have to enable 'System Protection', which is generally selected by default. System protection creates restore points regularly and when some major events like program installation takes place.
Mentioned below are the steps to use this feature for restoring your files and folders that get corrupt or lost due to deletion or any such reasons:
Steps to Restore Corrupt or Damaged Files with Previous Versions: Follow these steps to restore your corrupt or damaged files in Windows 7:
*Select the file that is in question and right-click on it.
*Click 'Restore previous versions' option available on the context menu.
*This shows a dialog box. In this dialog, navigate to the 'Previous Versions' tab to view all available versions of the selected file. If you do not find any, then there may not be any restore point or you modified this file long ago due to which the restore point is deleted.
*Before restoring the found file, click 'Open' to see it whether it is the version of the file that you wanted or not. However, you can also copy this file to some other location as restore overwrites the existing version of file.
If you have used Windows backup to create the backup of your file, then you can restore your data from it at this point. However, you have to have the media wherein your backup is available.
Steps to Restore Deleted Files with Previous Versions:
If you have deleted some of your precious files from your Windows 7 system and finding some method to restore them, then you should not worry as you can restore deleted files using 'Previous Versions'. Follow below mentioned steps for the same:
*Go to the folder where your deleted file was stored before the deletion.
*Right-click on this folder and select the 'Restore previous versions' option.
*In the dialog box that appears, select the 'Previous Versions' tab. This shows the list of all the versions of this folder. Double-click the version of the folder that you want. A list of all the files that were present in it at that time is generated.
*From here, you can just drag or copy all the files to the location where you want them to be. Simply select your deleted files and copy them where you want to store them and you are done.
However, if in case you are unable to use this utility of Windows 7 to restore your deleted files, then use of a professional Windows file recovery software like Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery software is recommended.
Jacy Andrew is the author of this article. She has been a blogger for 3 years and holds her expertize in data recovery. She has also written several blog posts on various Windows File Recovery Software [http://www.windows-file-recovery.com/recover-lost-partition.php].
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