How to recover a deleted file?

[junoslord]

This totally unrelated to Wesnoth but I have a question about Windows...
more specifically the trash can... see where I'm going yet?

How, or, can I recall, I mean restore, items I sent away... I'm f*d, aren't I?

Cause I had an entire unit tree for my campaign, and most of my story background in the folder I blitzed. HELP!

[Crendgrim]

We are not a general-purpose support board. Moved to Off Topic.

[shadowm]

And your Windows version is?

More generally, you should be able to restore your files by double-clicking on the Trash/Recycle Bin icon, selecting whatever you find there that needs to be restored, right clicking on it, and choosing Restore or whatever.

That is, assuming your files went there in the first place. If you originally used e.g. Shift+Delete to delete them or the Trash/Recycle Bin is disabled for their source medium, they are actually deleted and gone for good for most practical purposes.

[junoslord]

I'm running XP. But I already cleared the trash can...

So I guess it's gone. Thanks anyway, though.

[ancestral]

Sometimes you can restore the system to a previous state, if so, maybe that would work. Otherwise, if it's gone gone, likely the only other option is data rescue/recovery software, which gets expensive.

[Elvish_Hunter]

How, or, can I recall, I mean restore, items I sent away... I'm f*d, aren't I?

That is, assuming your files went there in the first place. If you originally used e.g. Shift+Delete to delete them or the Trash/Recycle Bin is disabled for their source medium, they are actually deleted and gone for good for most practical purposes.

Not exactly. From a technical point of view, Windows only marks the corresponding sectors in the File Allocation Table as "available". But the files are still there, at least until they get overwritten, that's why if you have some files that need to be gone for good you need to use a shredder.

Otherwise, if it's gone gone, likely the only other option is data rescue/recovery software, which gets expensive.

Ye olde MS-DOS, up to version 6.22 included a tool called UNDELETE, but of course this won't work on FAT32, and NTFS.
However, there are several file recovery softwares around, and some of them are actually freeware, at least for personal use. Personally, when I accidentally deleted a file, I used Convar's PC Inspector File Recovery, although at the time I used Windows XP (it does not support Windows Vista or 7). It's freeware and there is also a specialized version for flash media.
However, when using this kind of softwares, bear in mind that they can't do anything if the file got overwritten (even by the installation of the recovery software itself), and that the more you use the computer, the higher are the chances that your file got nuked.
Also, according to point 1c of Posting Guidelines, I edited the title with a more meaningful one.

[Ravana]

I use dropbox to sync all wesnoth files between my computers and it also has option to recover deleted/edited files (to older version).

[shadowm]

Not exactly. [...]

I said “for most practical purposes”. In my experience, it isn’t very easy to recover deleted files but I have done it before on an Ext3 filesystem (and hope to never have to do it again).

[Elvish_Hunter]

In my experience, it isn’t very easy to recover deleted files but I have done it before on an Ext3 filesystem (and hope to never have to do it again).

Yeah, for what I can read it's extremely hard to recover deleted files from ext3 and ext4 - although some programs do exists as well (extundelete, ext3undel, photorec).
But the OP was asking for help about Windows, and I don't think that he's using a ext4 partition on Windows with a special driver. It's much easier to undelete on FAT32 or NTFS, at the point that there are a lot of free tools available (more than I expected). This list may be a good starting point.