How To Restore Deleted Files In Windows 10 | File History

Did you end up deleting a file or a folder on your PC by accident? Or did you change your mind after hitting the Delete key on purpose?

We can’t promise anything. But first, you must stop doing anything else that can cause the disk drive to write new data. That alone decreases the odds of successfully restoring deleted files in Windows 10.

There are several methods to go about recovering data. They may or may not end up working for you. But as long as you were quick enough or have a few backups at hand, there’s no reason you can’t get your files back.

Begin by looking at the most obvious of places—the Recycle Bin.

Tip: If you’re looking to restore deleted system files in Windows 10, it’s best to perform a system reset instead.

Dig Around the Recycle Bin

As long as you didn’t delete any files or folders permanently, you can almost always find them inside the Recycle Bin. You can get to it by selecting the Recycle Bin icon on the Windows 10 desktop.

Typically, you’ll see lots of junk inside the Recycle Bin. If you can’t locate the item that you want to restore, try searching for it using the Search Recycle Bin field to the top-right of the window.

To make things a bit easier, select the View tab and pick Details. You can then use the Original Location and Date Deleted columns to sort items by storage location and date.

Once you’ve located a file or folder that you want to get back, right-click and select Restore. That should put it back in its original location.

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If you can’t find a deleted item inside the Recycle Bin, here are a few reasons why:

  • You deleted it permanently.
  • It was too big to fit the Recycle Bin.
  • Storage Sense or a third-party maintenance tool ended up emptying the Recycle Bin.

Restore Using File History

Do you have File History backups set up on your Windows 10 computer? If so, you can recover deleted files and folders easily as long as they were included in a previous backup.

Start by connecting the external drive that contains the File History backup. Then, open File Explorer, navigate to the location of a deleted file or folder and select the History icon under the Home tab.

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That should open the File History window. You can look through snapshots of the directory using the arrows to the bottom of the screen.

Once you’ve located a deleted item, select it and use the green-colored Restore icon to recover it. Rinse and repeat for any other files or folders that you want to get back.

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Restore Using “Backup and Restore”

Windows 10 also allows you to recover deleted files and folders that were included within backups created using the older Backup and Restore tool from Windows 7. Unlike with File History, however, restoring your data does involve a bit of work.

First, connect your external backup drive and open the Control Panel by searching for control panel on the Start menu. Then, pick the Backup and Restore (Windows 7) option and select Restore my files.

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On the Restore Files window that shows up, you can use the Search button to find and add files and folders inside the backup that you want to recover. Or, you can select the Browse for files or Browse for folders buttons to dig into the backup and add them manually.

After you’re done, select Next and choose between restoring the files to the original location or a different directory. Finally, select Restore .

That’s all, folks :slight_smile:

Optional: Use a File Recovery Tool

Source: helpdeskgeek

Happy learning!

4 Likes

Now day’s it is very easy to restore deleted files on Windows system even if you had deleted files from recycle bin. There are a lot of different methods mentioned in this tutorial for recovering lost files but all these methods requires technical knowledge. If one who is not that technical strong then that person need to take help from data recovery software like Recua, Stellar.