Today it is difficult to imagine that years before the Internet, phishing attacks, viruses, etc. the only fear of a PC user was accidentally deleting a file.
Decades after the first PC rolled off the assembly line, a deleted file still stirs those same old fears. Recuva, EaseUS Data Recovery, Disk Drill, Stellar Data Recovery are not no-names for advanced users.
And now, Windows has offered users its own version of an undelete utility - Windows 10 File Recovery tool for free online.
It's a command-line only tool. It relies on the same principle more sophisticated shareware and professional undelete utilities have long used: deleted files are not actually immediately erased.
What the computer does is merely removing pointers to the locations of the "erased" data, notifying the system that the containers holding those data are available for use should they be needed to store newer files.
There are three modes of recovery offered by Windows File Recovery Tool. The default setting is for NTFS file systems and is ideal for resurrecting recently deleted files.
More advanced Segment mode may do a better job retrieving older deleted files, though it will likely take longer.
The third mode is Signature. The best option for retrieving files kept on external devices using FAT, exFAT and ReFS file systems.
The Recovery Tool has only limited usefulness on solid state drives. That is because those drives immediately wipe out deleted files.
Windows 10 users have an alternative to undelete utilities: the Recycle Bin. But there are limitations. Only those files deleted from fixed disks are sent there; deleted files originating on removable media, USB drives, or other external drives are not sent to the Recycle Bin but are deleted immediately. The same applies to files deleted from the Windows command prompt. In addition, the Recycle Bin holds only a limited amount of data and removes the oldest files first as new files are sent there.
Although it is not listed as such, the new tool appears to be a beta offering given its version number is 0.0.11761.0. Users must have the latest Windows 10 update (May 2020).
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