As long as the actual data is still present, data recovery should be possible. The data is still physically present on the drive, but the space is marked as free, ready for new data to be overwritten. What has actually been deleted is the master file table (MFT) reference, which keeps a record of where the data is stored. Windows File Recovery – and other data recovery software – is able to recover data from hard drives because when a file is deleted, it is actually still present. With Windows File Recovery, you can undelete files for free whether the files are lost due to accidental deletion or corruption, the data recovery tool will attempt to restore them.

However, Windows File Recovery is free, so if you’ve got some data you’d like to recover, it’s worth giving a go before you splash out on more expensive data recovery software.

For this reason, it may be a bit trickier to use compared to other data recovery tools. Microsoft’s Windows File Recovery tool isn’t like other data recovery software, in that it doesn’t have a fancy user interface – it’s a command-line utility. Windows Files Recovery is an official tool, released for free by Microsoft, that allows you to recover data from hard drives, solid-state drives, SD cards, USB drives, and more.

Windows file recovery