Step1. Choose the Wizard Mode recovery

After launching the program, you are guided to the Wizard Mode automatically. Here you only need to click on "Next" to answer two simple questions and the program will do the rest for you.

Step2. Select the file type you want to recover

You are here in front of the first question. View file types and check the one that you are going to recover, or check "All files" if you want to recover various data in different file types. There are graphic, audio, video, document and email file types.

Step3. Tell where you lost your files

The second question is where you lost your files, such as from the Recycle Bin, Desktop and My Documents, partitions, or the external removable devices. You can also give an order to search your whole computer if you don’t remember the place, or to search the folder if you know exactly the place.

Step4. Begin to search your lost files

Now you can click on "Start" to find your lost data. BTW, you must have noticed that there is "Deep Scan" or "Raw File Recovery" option displayed. Generally, "Deep Scan" enables you to recover files lost due to formatting, while "Raw File Recovery" can help to retrieve all files that you lost long time ago for various reasons. Therefore, you can ignore them if you only want to recover the files you deleted recently.

Step5. Preview and recover your lost files

If you chose "All files" in the previous step, the scanning result would be displayed in file types, such as archive, audio, database, document, email, graphic, video, etc. You can recover them selectively after previewing. PDF, PPT, RAR, ZIP, Excel, and photos like PNG, JPG, JPEG, TIF, etc. can be previewed before recovery.

Additionally, you can check the previous path of those files by switching "File type" to "Path".

Important: Do not save files to the location where you lost your files. If you don't recover the files you are looking for, they will be overwritten by your new file saving.

Tips:

Recover in advance: During the recovery process, you can check files at the same time. If the files you want have been scanned out, you can "Pause" to recover them first. Then "Continue" or "Stop" your scan.

Filter: You can filter your lost files in the scanning result by search the filename or path.

Save the scanning result: When stopping the scanning, you can save the current scanning results for recovery at a later time.

Step1. Choose the Standard Mode recovery

When running the program, choose to go to "Standard Mode". Here you can choose Lost File Recovery, Partition Recovery, Raw File Recovery and Resume Recovery.

Step2. Select the recovery way

#1. Lost File Recovery

Lost File Recovery can recover deleted files such as deleted by Shift + Delete or emptied from the Recycle Bin, no matter from your computer or other removable media.

Select the disk or a specific folder where you lost your files, and click on “Start” to scan and recover them. Go to step5 above.

#2. Partition Recovery

Partition Recovery supports the recovery of lost, deleted, resized or damaged partition.

Select the disk where you lost your partition, and click on "Next".

After scanning the lost partitions, choose the one you want to recover files from, and hit on "Start". Go to step5 above.

#3. Raw File Recovery

You are suggested to use Raw File Recovery only when previous scans cannot find your lost files. This recovery process will take you lots of time and doesn't show you the file names and paths.

Select a partition to recover files from, and click on "Start". Go to step5 above.

There are scan options, quick scan for deleted files or long-time scan for all file. You can check one of them before performing the scan.

#4. Resume Recovery

Resume Recovery is only used for saved scan results. If you have a scan result, import the saved scan result to resume a previous recovery session for time saving.

Then it begins to continue scanning your lost files. When the scanning completes, switch to step5 above.

Video tutorial of Wondershare Data Recovery guide