How often you have found yourself in the middle of nowhere when you realize that there is an accidental file deletion. I know that because it has happened with me many a times. There could be lot many reasons for accidental file deletion such as:

Emptying Recycle Bin.
Hard deleting file(s) using 'Shift+Delete'.
Deleting files/folders through DOS
Virus Infections
Improper or abrupt system shutdown
Power outages
Cross linked files
Corrupt operating system
In such cases, one would think that the file is permanently deleted. However, that is not entirely true. Such files can be recovered if you take some precautions. However, Windows does not offer any in-built data recovery utility to recover deleted files. In such cases, you should use third-party file recovery software.

Consider a scenario wherein you have emptied the Recycle Bin from your Windows XP system as a part of your system maintenance routine. After performing the deletion, you realize that there were few files that were very important. However, as is just mentioned in the article, you can recover such deleted files. To know how is this possible, read on...

To start with, a file that is deleted, that is removed from the Recycle Bin remains there in the hard disk itself. There is a pointer of each and every file in the system that points to the location of these files. Each such pointer of all the files and folders is actually saved in a part near the beginning of the hard disk, which is, in turn, used by the operating system to list down the directory tree structure. When the pointer is removed, it is an indication to the operating system that the space is available for new files and folders. However, as mentioned earlier, the file remains physically there and can be recovered. However, this can be done using third-party file recovery software. Such read-only tools are able to perform file recovery without overwriting the existing data by using fast yet sophisticated scanning algorithms.

Stellar Phoenix File Recovery Plus is a file recovery software that enables you to recover the files that were deleted from any instance of deletion. It is able to perform file recovery from various file systems such as FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, and NTFS5 file systems. In addition, this file recovery software is able to recover deleted files from various storage media such as hard disks, USB drives, external hard disks, etc. It can also recover deleted emails from MS Outlook and Outlook Express. This software is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, and 2000.