Computer Act!ve - UK (2022-04-27)

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Leave this option

selected when installing

Recuva on your USB

stick

Installing a handful of essential repair

and maintenance tools on a USB stick

means you’ll always know what to reach

for when you run into problems. Here

we’ll explain the programs you need to

create this emergency toolkit. As you’d

expect, they’re much smaller than the

operating systems included in the

previous section, so you don’t need to

worry about the size of your USB stick.

Recover lost files

It’s maddening when you accidentally

delete a file, but you may be able to

recover it. This is true even if you’ve

emptied the recycle bin. All this does is

mark the on-drive locations taken up by

its contents as available for reuse – so, if

you’re lucky, your ‘lost’ file might not be

overwritten for weeks. The key is to act

fast, and launch your recovery software

from a USB rather than an internal drive.

To do this, we recommend using Recuva

(free from http://www.snipca.com/41580).

When you first launch it, click Customize

on the installer, followed by More. Now

click Browse and navigate to your USB

stick so you don’t install it on your

internal drive and risk overwriting your

lost data. Leave the default option of

‘Install for anyone using this computer’

selected (see screenshot above).

Every time you run Recuva, Windows

will ask if you’re happy for it to make

changes to your device. Click ‘Yes’, then

decide whether you want to find all lost

files, or just pictures, music, documents,

and so on. You can then scan all attached

drives or a specific location.

Recuva is easy to use, and found more

than 290,000 deleted files on a computer

we’d been using for five years, which it

categorised according to how difficult

each one was to recover.

00 – 00 Month 2022 • Issue xxx13 – 26 April 2022 • Issue 629

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