Destination Folder

File recovery is a copying operation. Files are reconstructed in the computer memory and copied to the Destination Folder. During this operation the subject drive must be write-protected so that the copying is not disrupted. Therefore, the destination folder must be located on another drive.

If there is only one hard drive in the computer, you must create a new drive letter by mapping a network shared folder or installing a new drive such as a USB external drive or memory stick. Generally data cannot be recovered to CD or DVD drives because they require drive C as an intermediate staging area.

If you do not have any other storage media and must recover files to the same drive, you may lose some or all of the lost data permanently with no chance of recovery. The risk depends on the amount of data being recovered compared to free disk space. For example, if the drive has 40 GB of free space and 2 MB of data is being recovered, the risk is very low. But if you are recovering 1 GB of data on 2 GB of free space, much of the deleted data will be overwritten, resulting in corrupted recovered files.