Q. Clumsily, I've managed to delete some images which meant a great deal to me from my iPad. Is there any way that I can recover them?

A. Possibly, but prepare for a long answer! Assuming that you synchronised your iPad with your PC/Mac using iTunes periodically, synchronising photographs was turned on in iTunes (the default setting), and the photographs were on the iPad at the time of the backup(s), or that you use Apple's free iCloud service, then there are three potential chances of recovering them. If you use iCloud generally, go to the photography app on the iPad, sign-in to iCloud, and then look for the My Photo Stream album. If your photographs are there, you may download them by tapping on each one and selecting Save to Camera Roll. If you don't use iCloud as a general service, then the photographs may have been saved (encrypted) as part of the usual iTunes backups taken during synchronisations. If you connect your iPad to your PC/Mac and start iTunes, you can opt to Restore from Backup - either from your PC or from iCloud depending on which backup option has been selected. Note though that this will restore everything, over-writing the current contents of the iPad. Alternatively, to avoid over-writing all of the current data, you could try a program called iPad/iPod/iPhone Data Recovery, but try the demo version to restore a single image before actually buying the program for US$59.95, just in case it doesn't work for you!

Q. I back up the My Documents folders and files periodically, but this doesn't include my e-mail for which I use Outlook Express. How can I back up my e-mails?

A. There are a number of free e-mail back-up offerings. One that I'd recommend is MailStore. It runs across most Windows operating systems, and supports most Windows PC-based mailers.

Q. When I upgraded to Windows 7 from Windows XP, I asked a local PC business to do it for me. When the PC was returned, I was horrified to discover that all of my family photographs had been deleted from the hard drive. Are they still there somewhere, and could they be retrieved?

A. I fear that they are completely lost if the business did the conventional installation of the replacement operating system over the top of the old one. It is possible to install a new operating system alongside an old one, in which case they will still be there, but that would be most unusual unless they were specifically asked to do this, and if they had then you should see an operating system choice when you start the PC. It would be usual for a shop to ask specifically whether you had backed-up, or otherwise saved your data, before starting this sort of job. Even if you don't remember them doing this, it is worthwhile asking them if they made a back-up copy of the hard disk before doing the work, but do it soon because they wouldn't keep such copies for long after a job appeared to have been satisfactory. There is an adage in the computer world to the effect that data doesn't exist until there are two copies of it. There are a number of ways of taking this second copy, which don't have to be expensive. One can use a USB stick, an external hard drive, or free cloud (i.e. online) storage capacity such as Dropbox.

Q. On closing Outlook Express, it suggested that I compress my e-mail folders. Next time I started Outlook Express, all of my folders except the Inbox had disappeared! Eventually I located the folders, and their contents, on my hard disk in a format ending .dbx. How on earth can I recover them? (This can also occur with the full version of Outlook, and Windows Mail on more recent computers - Editor.)

A. Your computer must have experienced a power failure, or software fault, whilst Outlook Express was running the compression, which has caused what are normally hidden folders to become visible. (.dbx is Outlook Express's own file format.) Open Outlook Express and click on File, then Import then Messages. Now navigate to where you found the missing folders, and follow the on-screen instructions to select and import them. Of course, there is a chance that the failure/fault may have produced some corrupted folders or messages, so that they won't import correctly. If this is a sufficiently significant problem for you, you could try OE-Mail Recovery, which claims to fix these issues, though I have no experience of it myself. It costs $27.

Q. I put all of my music collection into my iTunes library, and from there onto my iPod. Now I've somehow managed to erase the library from iTunes! Is it possible to transfer the collection back from the iPod to my iTunes on my PC?

A. Providing that your iPod is not an iPod Touch, then yes it is possible though it is a rather lengthy procedure, involving persuading your PC to see the iPod as simply external storage like a memory stick. Connect your iPod to your PC via USB as normal. Once iTunes has started, click on the iPod's icon, select the Settings tab, and make sure that the Manually manage music and Enable disk use options are checked on. Close iTunes. Now go to Start and select Computer, or My Computer, depending on your version of Windows. The iPod should be showing as an external drive. Select it and open the Folder Options Window, which will be in either the Tools or Organise menu depending on your Windows version. Click the View tab, and find the option for Hidden files and folders. Tick it on and select OK. A new folder will have appeared on the iPod called iPod Control. Open this folder, and find the sub-folder called Music. Drag the sub-folder called Music across to your PC, which will copy all of the music on the iPod. Open iTunes again, and select Add folder to library from the File menu, and direct it the Music folder that you copied across. Your music collection will then be imported back into iTunes.

Q. I mistakenly sent some of my files to my Windows PC's Recycle Bin, which I have since emptied. Is it possible to get them back?

A. Possibly. When a computer deletes a file, it strips only a tiny bit of data from the beginning of it, so the main part of the file will still be sitting on your hard drive. But the longer you leave things before attempting to recover it, the more chance there is that the file will be overwritten. So the first rule of file recovery is: stop using the computer as soon as you realise you have a problem. To get the files back, try running DataRecovery (free from http://www.tinyurl.com/qhsja). Be sure to download the program to, and run it from, an external drive or a USB stick, to avoid the software overwriting the very files you want to recover!