Known as Windows File Recovery, the tool supports mechanical hard drives, SSDs, USB drives, and memory cards. Microsoft provides a free command-line utility for Windows 10 and 11 that tries to recover deleted files. The longer you wait, though, the greater the chances that most or all of a file’s clusters will be overwritten, reducing the odds of fully recovering it. If you swoop in quickly enough, the file may be fully intact and recoverable. Rather, its space is marked as available by the operating system, which means the clusters allocated to that file can be overwritten by new data. When you delete a file, the data isn’t physically removed from your disk. This mostly depends on how fast you ride to its rescue. If you do permanently delete a file (press Shift+Del to do so) or empty the entire Recycle Bin, recovering a file is trickier but still doable. Image: Lance Whitney How a file is deleted If you find the right file, right-click on it and select Restore ( Figure 1). As with any folder, you can sort the files by name, location, date, and other criteria. Simply open the Recycle Bin icon on your desktop.

As long as you don’t permanently delete the file or empty the Bin, the file should be available for you to recover. This ensures deleted files aren’t actually deleted but kept in reserve.

In a nutshell, Windows devotes a small percentage of your hard disk space to a hidden system folder known as the Recycle Bin. You’ve probably already used the Recycle Bin to bring back a file. Instead, you can use free programs like Recuva and Glarysoft File Recovery Free. Microsoft offers its own command-line recovery program, though it’s not quite user-friendly. Assuming you’ve already scoured the Recycle Bin and have come up empty, that’s when it’s time to turn to a good recovery tool. But rather than moan and curse, you can try to recover it. You’re having trouble finding a certain file on your Windows PC and you have a hunch you may have deleted it.

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