Recover Your Data with Software

When dealing with a software data loss, the first and most important thing to keep in mind is not to work with the drive in question. Every second that the drive is connected to a running system is a second that you lose your chances at recovery. Your operating system is reading and writing to your drive constantly, whether you're actively doing something or not. Now that your system is seeing the deleted data as ‘free space' it will happily overwrite this area—along with your chances of recovery.

1.) Shutdown the machine connected to the drive you've deleted data from. Now that your drive is ‘safe' you can make a clone of the drive and attempt the recovery from the clone. 

There are a number of ways to clone the drive, some easier and quicker than others.

2.) Scan the clone with a few different recovery programs. 

There are numerous options here, both free and paid-for packages are available. 

Recuva (http://www.piriform.com/recuva) is a good free option, while Zero Assumption Recovery( http://www.z-a-recovery.com) works as well if you want to spend a few dollars.

Hope this helps.