f13.net

I've seen a ton of different programs, but never had to mess with it until now. My wife has deleted her pictures folder and I'm just looking for any recommendations on a program that someone has used to recover files that are no longer in the recycle bin.

I've used Drive Rescue 1.9d in the past, though it's years old at this point.

Whatever you use, create an 'installed' copy on CD from your computer.  You don't want the installation to overwrite data.

Hiren's boot CD (http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd) will do the trick, check the recovery section. I use it for most data recoveries when it's just an accidental delete. It's a clean, easy, wave your e-hero flag and go home type of tool.
It's should be on the google somewhere.

Is it just me, or is there not a link to download the actual BootCD on the page anymore?

If you're using Vista or 7, recovering deleted files is easy-peasy.  If the folder itself is still there, right-click on it and select 'Restore Previous Versions'.  It will show you a list of backed-up days, just select a day that still had the pictures you want and done.

If the folder is deleted, do the following to the folder that contained it.  So instead of clicking on C > Users > Your Wife > Pictures, you'd be right-clicking on C > Users > Your Wife.  Same as above, pick a date before she deleted the folder and it should pop right back.

Ya, Volume Shadow Copy can be great. When its working. Lotsa times it ain't working right.

There isn't, they removed it years ago. It usually isn't too hard to find though.

The particular program from that boot CD that you need is PhotoRec (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec). It's free, it's hairy-chested pay attention to words stuff but it will have a good recovery rate because it does some data carving to attempt to recover files. There are commercial programs that can simplify things and which may have an even greater recovery rate, such as Adroit (http://photo-recovery.info/).

Data recovery tools (http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Tools:Data_Recovery) on Forensics Wiki (http://www.forensicswiki.org/).

I'm going to second the "don't download the tools to the drive you want to restore." don't do anything with that drive the last thing you want is windows doing a recovery point erasing everything.

I was going to respond sooner, but expected someone else would go into more detail... and honestly I do hope everything went well with getting these files restored.

Honestly the first advice I would've given was to not use the computer because any files including temporary internet ones might end up over writing the space on the drive for the deleted files. They are still there, but the disk space is reclaimed to be used by anything, and this is the biggest step to making sure the files aren't gone forever.

People have already suggested good solutions, and the way to do it in Vista/7, but making sure the disk space doesn't get used is a critical stage in the recovery of files.

I certainly hope everything went ok, and that Lan does give us an update on how this went.