In answering the question how to recover files, we must begin by examining what type of files are lost and what can best be described as the location the files were last seen in. For example if your digital photographs were last seen while you are downloading 100 pictures from your digital camera into your computer, you know that those picture files were originally stored on your digital camera’s internal memory or its camera memory card. If the download head was successful and you had been able to preview or open the picture files directly from your computer’s hard drive, then your search will begin in your computer’s internal hard drive. Once you have made an educated guess as to where your files were last seen intact, you can proceed to the next step in learning how to recover files. That is to install a powerful third party data recovery tool. The best of these will allow you to search through either your computer’s internal hard drive or any digital storage device connected to your computer. Further, the very best of the best data recovery tools will load and operate directly from your computer’s CD/DVD disk drive allowing you to look over your files without any risk of ever overwriting other files stored on your hard drive.