Retrieve files from a hard drive

Before searching for a way of recovering them, try performing a search in File Explorer. Hopefully, you just misplaced the file and you can find it again. You can get it back in your system.

Before learning the different ways to recover deleted files from HDD , let's first understand a few things. The data stored on your computer is fragile. You can lose it in numerous ways. Most common situations are:. It doesn't matter under which state you have lost your crucial data; it can be recoverable in different ways.

You will learn about them in the sections discussed below. You can get back any type of data that is deleted from your system. Be it your precious memories that are captured in the form of photographs or video and even audio files.

Your important presentations, word, excel, PDF files, and all other essential documents can also be recovered easily. If you have deleted the files that were originally stored on your PC hard drive, you can quickly recover files from HDD with the solutions discussed here. While deleting a single file, have you mistakably removed the complete folder?

Have you also forgotten to take the backup of your files? Don't worry as Recoverit; HDD data recovery software can help you regain access to your lost data. Recoverit Data Recovery is one of the best data recovery software's that helps you quickly retrieve the lost and deleted data with a high recovery rate.

This software can recover images, emails, archives, multimedia files, and supports more than formats. You can also use it for your computer's HDD restore; to recover data from the recycle bin, desktop, an external device, or even your crashed computer. To recover your deleted files from the hard drive, select the location first.

Your selected drive should be the one from where you have lost data. After selecting the location, you can perform two types of scans to recover files. The two scan modes are all-around scan and deep scan. When the scanning is in progress, if you find your data before its completion, the scan can be stopped or paused in between. Once the scan completes and makes you available with the data found during the scan, you can preview the files before recovering them. This assures you that you are recovering the correct files.

After previewing the files click on recover to complete the recovery of the lost files. But one thing that demands your attention here is that never save the data on the same path from where you have lost them. By doing so, you are interrupting the recovery process, and it can even lead to loss of data permanently.

Prefer taking a backup of the system regularly. If you forget it, download and install Recoverit to get back access to your lost data. If you remove files by pressing the "delete" key, then you can easily restore them.

Check the recycle bin once. There is a chance that you might find your deleted data in the recycle bin; if you have not emptied it.

It is a folder, or you can say a directory that acts as a temporary storage space for your deleted files. When you delete files using the "delete" button, the files are not permanently deleted from the hard drive.

Instead, they make their way to the "recycle bin. You cannot use the file until it is in the recycle bin. To reuse it, you need to restore it into the system. In such a case, open Recycle Bin to look for your deleted file.

When you find your file, right-click on it, and select Restore to return the file to its original location. Then a backup or a data recovery software can help retrieve your deleted data from a hard drive. Applications such as Microsoft Outlook stores deleted emails on your hard drive in the Deleted Items folder.

Or else, go to the Deleted Items folder from the left pane of Outlook and drag and drop the message to the Inbox folder. Select the required email message and click OK to get back the deleted message on the Deleted Items folder. When you have backed up your PC hard drive before data loss by using File History, you can use the File History backup drive to restore your deleted files.

For an external hard drive, File History won't work. In such a case, a clone of the external hard drive, backup of important files to yet another external hard drive, or a data recovery software can help retrieve your lost data from the external hard drive. If you have synced your important folders on your PC hard drive to OneDrive, the proprietary cloud storage drive from Microsoft, you can use your OneDrive account to access your synced data from anywhere, anytime by using the Internet.

A Windows data recovery software can help you to retrieve data from your internal or external hard drive that is subjected to deletion, formatting, corruption, or software failure. Steps are as follows:. Run the software. Once the scan is over, preview the scanned files, select all those that are required, and then click Recover.

On the dialog box, click Browse to specify a distinct save location preferably an external hard drive, then click Save. But to save your recoverable files, you need to activate the software.

The best part is the software offers a day money-back guarantee, so activate it with full confidence. Deciding which mode to use. Use the following table to help you decide which mode to use. If you are not sure, start with Regular mode. General syntax. Specifies the storage device where the files were lost. Must be different from the destination-drive. Specifies the storage device and folder on which to put the recovered files.

Must be different from the source-drive. Advanced syntax. Specifies whether to always a , never n , orkeep both always b when choosing whether to overwrite a file. The default action is to prompt to overwrite. To keep your results manageable and focus on user files, some file types are filtered by default, but this switch removes that filter. For a complete list of these file types, see the information after this table. Specifies which file types are filtered.

Specifies the number of sectors on the source device. To find sector information, use fsutil. File extension filter list. The following file types are filtered from results by default.

There may be several users on your computer, including you, the administrator, and the default account. Why am I getting this message: "Source and Destination cannot refer to the same physical partition? The source and destination drive or partition path should not be the same. If you only have one drive, use a USB or external hard drive as your destination path. Why are additional files recovered from my operating system drive? Behind the scenes, Windows is constantly creating and deleting files.

By default, Windows File Recovery filters out these files, but some slip through. If you used Regular mode, try again in extensive mode if the file type is supported. It's possible that the free space was overwritten, especially on a solid-state drive SSD. If you need help, contact your administrator. If necessary, download and launch the app from Microsoft Store.

When you are prompted to allow the app to make changes to your device, select Yes. In the Command Prompt window, enter the command in the following format:. There are three modes you can use to recover files: Default, Segment, and Signature. Default mode examples Recover a specific file from your C: drive to the recovery folder on an E: drive. Recover jpeg and png photos from your Pictures folder to the recovery folder on an E: drive. Recover any file with the string "invoice" in the filename by using wildcard characters.

Recover ZIP files zip, docx, xlsx, ptpx, and so on from your C: drive to the recovery folder on an E: drive. Recovering files from non-NTFS file systems is only supported in signature mode.

If you're not sure, start with the default mode. Signature mode extension groups and file types.