There is a joy in collecting movies, even when there are many streaming services that offer the best movies and TV series right now. For starters, streaming services don’t always carry the movies you love indefinitely; collecting the movies yourself, on the other hand, lets you keep your favorite ones forever.

Well, that is until something happens to your hard drive. Hard drive failure is perhaps the single biggest threat to your digital movie collection. Accidentally deleting your movies from the drive is also something that could lead to you losing a large chunk of your collection. When these things happen, knowing how to recover deleted movies from your hard drive is handy.

First Things to Do

When you do accidentally delete your movies, the first thing you want to do is check the Recycle Bin. Most files go to the Recycle Bin when you hit the Delete button. Of course, deleting movies that are stored in a flash drive or an external SSD means losing the files immediately, which means recovering them is slightly more challenging.

After making sure that the movies are deleted, it is time to turn to a good piece of data recovery software. There are a lot of apps and software that can help scan your hard drive for residue of deleted files.

Install the recovery software and start scanning your drive for the deleted movie. If you are lucky, the deleted files are detected immediately, and you can continue with the recovery process. Recently deleted files are usually recoverable. You should get your movies back in just a few seconds depending on the size of the file.

Dealing with Loss of Files

In some cases, recovering deleted or missing files is not so straightforward. The sectors used by the deleted files may now be filled with new files, which means recovering your deleted movies isn’t necessarily possible. Your drive may be inaccessible completely too, either due to a broken filesystem or hardware failure.

If the movies are important, your best bet is relying on the expertise of professional data recovery specialists. Companies like Secure Data Recovery use special tools and advanced techniques to really dig deep into every byte in the hard drive in an attempt to find your deleted or missing movies.

They are also more equipped to deal with hardware failure. Rather than dealing with the possibility of damaging the files (and the drive) further, leave the recovery task to professionals.

More Things to Keep in Mind

The things you do after accidentally deleting important movie files matter. You want to avoid copying new files to the drive so the sectors occupied by the deleted files don’t get reused. This allows for an easier recovery and increases your chances of getting your movies back altogether.

You also want to stop using the drive when you hear an unusual ticking noise from the drive itself. The drive may also slow down considerably when used in normal operations. Once again, the best thing to do is to unplug the drive safely after shutting down your computer.

Deleting your favorite movies isn’t the end of the world, especially when you consider the wealth of recovery options available today. Follow the tips we discussed in this article to increase your chances of recovering your lost movies.