Windows 10 uses a feature called TRIM (which improves SSD performance) to permanently erase deleted files and folders. Solid-state drives (SSDs), on the other hand, function differently. However, our tests didn’t yield good results so you may want to skip it. You can then select the file or files that you want to restore and use the Recover option to retrieve them.Īlternatively, you can use Windows File Recovery if you prefer a command-based approach to restore deleted files. It’s free to use, lets you scan various file types in specific directories, comes with a Deep Scan feature (which takes time but comes up with more results), and notifies you of the recoverable state of a deleted item.
That said, we recommend using Recuva for the job at hand. Get professional help if you haven’t done that before. If the deleted files are way too important to lose, you must seriously consider removing the HDD and hooking it up as a secondary drive on another computer before scanning it with a recovery tool. However, that will only work if you didn’t perform any intensive disk-related activities that could’ve overwritten the relevant file clusters in the meantime.īut here’s the catch installing the file recovery tool alone can permanently wipe out the data that you’re looking to recover. If the deleted files resided on an HDD or hard disk drive, you can use a file recovery tool to get them back. For example, if you ended up permanently deleting any file or folder within a directory that was set to sync to OneDrive, you can sign into and select Recycle bin to find and recover the deleted server-side copies.