lol, restore it out of the recycle bin.
When you empty the Recycle Bin or delete a file using another method, the file is still not really deleted. The file name is removed from the list of files in the folder or the Recycle Bin, and the space occupied by the file is made available to Windows for reuse. But Windows does not reuse the space straight away, so the data contained in the file will remain intact for some time to come, allowing the possibility of recovery.
The chances of recovering the file intact decrease the longer you leave it. Because the longer you leave it, the more likely it is that the computer will reuse all or part of the file's disk space for something else.
If you have defragmented the hard drive since the file was deleted, then unfortunately you have dealt a severe blow you your chances of a successful recovery. All the pointers to the location of the deleted data will have been lost, so it is much less likely that undelete software tools will find anything useful. You may have more luck using specialist products that can recover specific file types such as photo recovery software or Microsoft Word recovery software.
Tools that can help you undelete files that were deleted but are not in the Recycle Bin are not provided as standard in Windows. You will need to buy third party undelete software to do this. This software understands the internals of the system used to store files on a disk, and can locate clues to the whereabouts of the disk space a lost file occupied. This unerase software can also read the unallocated disk space, the space your deleted files formerly occupied and which is available for reuse. This space can't normally be read by programs.
It's advisable to have a second hard disk available, such as a removable drive, USB Flash drive or a network drive, if you don't already have more than one drive in your computer. You can install the recovery software on this drive, and then save the files that you recover to it, without overwriting space on your main hard drive that contains other deleted data.
If you don't have another hard drive, then DiskInternals Uneraser and other DiskInternals products featured on this site have a unique ability to save files direct to writeable CD without creating any temporary files on the hard drive. This exclusive capability makes these products safe to use in any situation giving the greatest chance of a successful recovery.
