In the age of information, digital data is an indispensable part of our life. We are used to saving our thesis, study materials, personal data, business documents, and many other things on a computer. Well, those files are often so important to us that we can’t afford to lose them. Thus, the demand for deleted file recovery and lost file recovery is increasing.
Yet, the real difficulty lies in a lot of ordinary/inexperienced computer users who don’t even have a clue how to retrieve deleted files on PC. Discovering this, we decide to introduce data deletion, data loss problems, and the exact way on how to recover permanently files on PC.
Please don’t be worried; what we’ll say in the following parts is easy to understand and the way we’ll provide is even suitable for users who have never done recovery work to get back missing files.
Now, let’s dive right into file deletion and data loss cases.
What Happens When File Is Deleted/Lost
Actually, even if you empty the Recycle Bin in Windows to delete files permanently, the files will not disappear; we just lose entries to them. The situation is the same when a drive is reformatted or the boot sector is damaged. So, what’s going on when we delete a file on a Windows PC?
In Windows, if we delete a file by using the conventional approach, the file content itself will not be really cleared.
For example, if we delete a file in Windows Explorer, Windows will put the file into the Recycle Bin. Even if we empty the Recycle Bin (or disable the Recycle Bin function before deletion to omit the confirmation box), the actual data file will not be erased by OS (operating system).
The file deletion process in Windows refers to the following actions: changing the first letter of the file name into a special character and marking the clusters occupied by the file as free and available. Certainly, the corresponding real content is still kept there. When we save new data into this drive the next time, those clusters marked as available may be used, in which case the old file content will finally be overwritten and erased from the computer.
As a result, we’re allowed to recover deleted files with the help of third-party tools by bypassing the operating system and operating disk directly.
Similarly, when a file is lost suddenly, the real content still exits; it is only the file entry that has been lost or damaged. By making use of the correct recovery tool, we’re also able to get it back.
A Closer Look at Popular File Loss Cases
The most important reason why file loss is so popular and attracts the attention of so many people is that there are a variety of causes for data loss. Now, please allow us to show you some frequently encountered file loss cases.
The first type (also the most common one) is file loss caused by accidental deletion.
"I was working on my laptop and accidentally deleted a whole folder containing from 20 to 25 Word files. I also emptied the Recycle Bin then, so no chance to find the deleted files there. I don't even remember the location of the folder when it was deleted, maybe the desktop, or maybe another folder inside my Documents. I have read on the Internet that recovery can be tried both using Microsoft tools and via external software previously downloaded. Suggestions in both directions are very well appreciated. This folder was quite important, so many thanks in advance to anyone who can help me with this.”– asked by DenisBaldoni on Microsoft’s Community
In this case, the user said that he had accidentally deleted a folder containing 20~25 word files and then emptied the Recycle Bin. Now, he wants to know how to recover deleted files from Recycle Bin but he can’t even remember the exact location of them.
The second type – file is deleted by partition damage.
"This HDD was connected to my PC but it only has some video files that I can't lose. Seagate. 2TB. Now, when I connect it inside of my PC like an extra HDD or using a USB adapter, appear a message telling me I need to format it. Please, somebody, know how can I recover the hard drive?"– asked by cartilages at Tom’s Hardware Forum
In this post, the user said that the system asked him to format the HDD connected to the computer. Now, he can’t access any files inside, so he wants to recover those files from HDD.
The third type – file is deleted by losing the partition.
"Hi, I have the same problem. When I plug in the drive, it says that it's successfully installed however it does not appear in "my computer". Also when I go into system tools it says that disk 1 is unknown, not initialized, and unallocated. Can you please help me, I don’t want to lose my data, it contains all my pics. Please help"– asked by jenny123 at Windows Seven Forums
Here, by looking at the description – “disk 1 is unknown, not initialized, unallocated”, we can confirm that this user’s partition(s) on disk 1 is gone. And all he wants to do is to recover all his files.
In a word, accidental deletion, partition damage, and partition loss are three main factors to cause file loss. Among them, partition damage includes two basic types: users formatted the drive by mistake or the drive is damaged suddenly due to unknown reasons. The partition loss problem is likewise.
Apart from those, a file can be lost from a PC because of an unexpected OS crash, sudden loss of files, and many other unknown reasons.
Now, let’s see how to retrieve deleted files on PC.
How to Retrieve Deleted Files on PC
To retrieve deleted files on PC or recover suddenly missing data, first, you need a good assistant – MiniTool Power Data Recovery. It is a clean and green data recovery software that is good at tackling various data loss situations, including mistaken deletion, hard drive corruption, partition loss, accidental formatting, and so on.
This tool offers a comprehensive solution to help you recover a variety of files, including documents, videos, pictures, audio, emails, and more. Moreover, it has a strong compatibility with almost all Windows versions, such as Windows 11, 10, 8.1, and 8.
Now, click the button below to download it, and then install it to a drive that does not contain any files to recover. After that, run the software and follow the instructions below to complete deleted file recovery.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Step 1. When you access the main interface of this MiniTool file restore tool, you need to hover over the target partition where data loss occurs and click the Scan button to start detecting the needed data. Also, this software allows you to scan the desktop, the Recycle Bin, or a specific folder for quick scan and recovery.
After clicking the Scan button, this software will automatically scan the selected partition/location for deleted, lost, and existing files. What you should do is wait patiently until the full scan is completed.
Step 2. Once the scanning process is completed, you can start to find the needed files. Typically, under Path, there are three categories displayed in the left panel: Deleted Files, Lost Files, and Existing Files. You can find the deleted/lost files from the first two categories. Alternatively, you can go to the Type category and make the software display all files according to file type and even file format.
Moreover, there are two other features available in this software to help you find the required files faster:
- Filter: Upon clicking the Filter button, you will have the ability to filter files. You can customize the file type, file modification date, file size, and file category for file filtering.
- Search: Type a partial or complete file name in the search box located in the upper right corner and press Enter. Afterward, the target file containing the keywords you typed will be displayed.
Step 3. Once you have roughly narrowed down the files you want, you can double-click each file to preview them one by one for confirmation. The software supports previewing diverse files with a single file size not exceeding 2 GB.
You can click the Save button in the preview window and select a directory to store the previewed file directly. Or, you can tick all files first and then hit Save in the scan results window to store all selected items at once.
Reading here, you must have a good understanding of how to retrieve deleted files on PC in common file loss cases.
Ways Users Often Use to Delete a File on a PC
Speaking of file deletion methods, most people’s natural response is pressing the “Delete” button or choosing “Delete” from the right-click menu.
Yet, in addition to it, there are also many other commonly used methods for deleting a file.
Use traditional ways:
- drag files or folders into the Recycle Bin;
- select the files or folders -> press “Delete” button -> click on “Yes” to confirm;
- select the files or folders -> press the “Delete” and “Shift” button at the same time -> click on “Yes” to confirm;
- right-click on the files or folders -> choose “Delete” from the pop-up menu.
- you can also employ the CMD commands to finish file/folder deletion.
Format/Delete partitions: if all the files & folders in a partition are not useful anymore, it would be troublesome to delete them one by one. So, people may choose to format or delete this partition as a whole.
Adopt special deletion tools: on the internet, there is much software equipped with the function to help users delete files/folders that can’t be deleted directly from the computer.
Note Those Things to Reduce File Loss Possibility
However, no matter which way you choose, once you find you’ve deleted the wrong data, you should close all unnecessary programs and stop using the computer as we suggested. Then, choose a reliable tool immediately to undelete deleted files as much as possible.
Besides, you need to read the following tips carefully:
1. Use the Cut and Paste function with caution: we often encounter people asking for help in this situation – they cut files from one directory, planning to paste them into another directory; yet an unknown error appears in the middle, so they can’t find certain data in neither source directory nor target directory.
At this time, you can’t rely on Recycle Bin. On the contrary, you’ll have no choice but to rely on data backup or data recovery tools. Thus, we highly recommend that users adopt Copy and Paste, instead of Cut and Paste, since the latter is much safer.
2. Do not perform disk defragmentation directly: disk defragmentation is frequently used to organize a messy disk to improve overall performance. Yet, it is sometimes a dangerous action.
Why? That is because problems are likely to occur during disk defragmentation and it is relatively hard to recover data lost in this way. Thus, we suggest users copy or back up data to another drive before disk defragmentation; and then, transfer files back after it.
3. Don’t employ third-party tools casually to resize drive: on the market, many inferior disk management tools with partition resize functions can be found. If you choose such a tool to resize the partition, any error that appears during resizing may damage your data and make it hard to recover.
4. Back up data regularly: backup is always believed to be the best preventive measure for sudden data loss. No matter how terrible the data loss case is, you’ve got nothing to worry about as long as you have the latest backups. You can use MiniTool ShadowMaker for file backup due to its high security.
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Summary
We can’t deny the fact that data loss issue happens frequently during our work or study. It often occurs out of a sudden, leaving no room for us to rescue our data before they’re deleted from the computer. Thus, retrieving deleted files on a PC becomes necessary.
Certainly, you can restore lost files from a backup (if you’ve enabled the Windows backup function or backed up data manually in advance). But, if you haven’t had any backups or lost the latest backups, you’ll need to look for another way out.
Noticing this, we offer useful recovery methods to help all users get out of terrible data loss situations. By using the recovery tool we recommended in this article, all the users can get back what they need in an easy but safe way unless their data are lost due to deadly hardware failures or have already been overwritten.
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Shirley graduated from English major and is currently an editor of MiniTool Team. She likes browsing and writing IT-related articles, and is committed to becoming a professional IT problem solver. The topic of her articles are generally about data recovery, data backup, and computer disk management, as well as other IT issues. In spare time, she likes watching movies, hiking and fishing.