The good news is: if you’ve accidentally deleted data, the information hasn’t actually vanished into thin air. Even if you’ve emptied your device’s trash bin, the data is still recoverable – you just don’t know where it is.

Different systems have different ways of tracking deleted files. With Windows, for instance, a master file will point to the location of every file on your storage device. Macs work along similar lines, with an allocation table keeping a record of what parts of a hard drive are being used.

Stop using your data storage device if accidental deletion of data has occurred! When you create new files, you can overwrite or destroy the deleted file.

As with deletion, data that’s inaccessible because the media it’s stored on has become damaged can also be retrieved with professional diagnostic and retrieval techniques.

Nevertheless, the fact that deleted files can be retrieved poses the risk of hackers gaining access to them. This problem can be solved by an experienced data recovery firm that also offers data erasure services to destroy data completely.