How to Recover Deleted Files in Windows 10 for Free
This article is about How to Recover Deleted Files in Windows 10 for Free.
- If you’ve ever wiped your hard drive, accidentally deleted an important file, or deleted the contents of a file, you know how frustrating it can be.
- Fortunately, deleting files may not be the end of the world.
Of course, the deleted files don’t have to be lost because they are still hidden in an invisible way in the hard drive area with a complete directory and can be easily recovered.
How to Recover Deleted Files in Windows 10 for Free
We will show you two easy ways to recover deleted files in Windows 10 for free.
Option 1: Restore files from the Recycle Bin
Option 2: Use a file recovery method for permanently deleted files
Recover recently-deleted files from Recycle Bin
If you don’t know if the file has been deleted completely, the Recycle Bin should be the first place you look to recover deleted files. I hope you save the file, then you will see it.
Steps to restore deleted files from Recycle Bin to original location on your computer:
Step 1: Double-click the Trash icon on the desktop to open it.
Step 2: Find and select the file or folder you want to restore.
To select multiple files or folders, hold down the Ctrl key as you select.
To select an array, use the Shift key instead.
Step 3: Right click the option and select “Restore”.
Recover Deleted Files in Recycle
Step 4: Wait for Recycle Bin to restore deleted files.
Restoring files deleted from the Recycle Bin takes only a few minutes in Windows, but the time spent depends on the number of files to be restored and their size together, but the speed of the computer is also a factor.
If you hit the Shift + Del key to permanently delete the file by mistake, or even empty the Recycle Bin how to you recover permanently deleted files?
how to recover the permanently deleted file
Fortunately, to help you recover from this situation, Microsoft recently released a new tool called Windows File Recovery.
The tool supports various file types and can help recover photos, audios, documents, videos, etc.
1. Recover Deleted Files Using Command Line Tool/app
Microsoft Windows File Recovery is a tool to recover deleted files from hard drives, SD cards, USB drives and other storage media.
Here’s how to use the Windows File Recovery command-line tool to try to recover deleted files in Windows 10.
Step 1: If you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to download and install the Windows File Recovery command-line tool from the Microsoft Store.
This tool requires Windows 10 May 2020 Update or a newer version of Windows 10 to be installed. It does not work on older versions of Windows.
Step 2: To run it, type “Windows File Recovery” in the search box. Click on the program that appears.
Open Windows File Recovery
Step 3: If prompted by UAC, click Yes to confirm running as administrator.
Step 4: Use the winfr command in the following format to try to recover the deleted files.
winfr source-drive:destination-drive:[/switches]
2. Windows File Recovery Commands
The source and destination drives will be different.
When restoring from the system drive (usually C:),
use /n and /y: to specify a file or user folder.
Windows File Recovery Example
There are three modes you can use to recover files:
Default, Segment and Signature.
- Default: Find recently deleted files and errors in storage and NTFS file system, it is not possible to show the exact name of the known file.
- Segment: Search for files that have been deleted for a long time or even after you’ve overwritten your drive.
- Signature: This mode is good for external storage media, for example a USB hard drive.
There are three modes you can use to recover files
Examples of incorrect values
To use the default mode, you use /n following the search path:
To search for a file named document.docx, you must use /n document.docx.
You can also specify the full file path, such as /n\Users\Tom\Documents\document.docx
To find all the files in the Documents folder if your username is Tom, you’ll use /n\Users Tom Documents.
To search with wildcards, use For example, /n\Users\Tom\Documents.docx will find all DOCX files in the Documents folder.
Let’s put it together now.
To find all the DOCX files in the C: drive and copy them to the D: drive, you must run this command:
winfr C:D:/n *.docx
You will need to type “y” to continue.
Recover deleted files in default mode
You will find the recovered files in a directory named “Recovery_[date and time]” in the drive path you specified on the command line.
Example of domain type (/r)
Recover deleted files with Segment mode
To use Segment mode, which examines the directory sector, you use /r in addition to /n.
So if the default mode search doesn’t find what you’re looking for, enter /r and try again.
For example, to recover all MP3 files deleted from your C: drive and save them to your D: drive, you would run:
winfr C:D: /r /n *.mp3
Recover deleted files with signature mode
Return each file to the string “invoice” in the file name using the notation.
winfr C:E:/r/n invoice
Example of signature style (/x)
The signature style works a bit differently. It checks file types, so it can only find deleted files of certain file types.
To use signature mode, you use /x to specify the signature mode and /y: to specify the type of file you want to search for.
Here is a list of supported file types and how they are organized in Microsoft documentation:
ASF: wma, wmv, asf
JPEG: jpg, jpeg, jp, jif, jfif, jfi
MP3: mp3
MPEG: mpeg, mp4, mpg, m4a, m4v, m4b, m4r, mov, 3gp, qt
PDF: pdf
PNG: png
ZIP: zip, docx, xlsx, pptx, odt, ods, odp, odg, odi, odf, odc, odm, ott, otg, otp, ots, otc, oti, otf, oth
If you want to search the E: drive for images in JPEG format and save them in the D: drive.
You will do this command:
win E: D: /x /y: JPEG
You can specify multiple files by separating them with spaces.
So if you want to find JPEGs, PDFs and Word documents, you need to run
winfr E: D: /x /y: JPEG, PDF, ZIP
Conclusion:
Using a data recovery tool is an effective step that can help you save time and effort.
To increase the chances of recovering deleted files from the device, you can download the file recovery program below and use one of them to search and recover deleted files.
some of the data recovery tools you can download
- Recuva
- disk recovery
- disc drill