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Our Windows version | Windows 10 |
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How long we tested | 1 week |
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Number of tested tools | 20 |
Whether it’s pictures, documents, audio, or file types, it’s a good idea to select a recovery program that supports the retrieval of a wide range of file extensions. Once you’re done recovering your files this time around, you may need to use the program again in the future for a different file type.
There’s a good chance that when you attempt to recover files from a particular storage medium, there will be a whole lot of recoverable files to sift through on the results page. That’s why it helps if the program is equipped with a preview feature that allows you to get a glimpse of a file before recovering it.
Not everybody is tech-savvy and knows their way around a command prompt or advanced menus. Choose a data recovery program that has a user interface and flow that fits your technical expertise. That way, you’ll be able to recover your files with minimal hassle. Some apps are even designed to accommodate both novice and expert users.
Download the program to your Windows or macOS laptop and install it
Fire up the application and point it at the disk where the files were lost
Click Recover to scan the disk for recoverable data
Select the files you want to restore and click Recover a second time
Keep food and drink away from your work computer. This one goes without saying, but you’d be surprised by the number of people who keep food and drinks dangerously close to their laptop or computer. No matter how careful you are, uncontrollable circumstances may occur that could cause a spill onto your machine, potentially compromising your data.
Do not mess with unfamiliar files. Operating systems include lots of important files that may not seem familiar to you. These files could be vital to running the platform and tweaking or deleting them could lead to the OS becoming unstable and may cause you to incur data loss. That’s why it’s best to leave unfamiliar system files alone.
Create an image at the first sign of storage failure. If you notice that your storage device is starting to fail, you should immediately create a backup image of the medium so that you can attempt data recovery later. That way, you can preserve whatever information is currently on the drive before it incurs further data loss.
For Windows, if you deleted the DDS file using the Delete key or right-click > Delete command, then you should be able to find it in the Recycle Bin. On Mac, deleted X files are moved to the Trash before being deleted permanently. If your file is not present in either of these tools, you’ll need to utilize a free data recovery program.
A quality data recovery program should allow for the retrieval of a wide range of different file types, whether they’re documents, images, audio clips, and others. Disk Drill is an excellent option that is capable of recovering DDS extension and you can easily filter out the results by typing the extension into the search bar at the results screen.
When DDS files are deleted from a computer, they are not permanently erased just yet. So long as they’re not overwritten by new data, these files remain out of sight on the storage media and can be recovered through quality data recovery programs. Backup tools like File History, System Restore, and Timeline can also be used to recover lost data.