Recovering Lost, Damaged, and Deleted Files and Folders
It takes only a fraction of a second to wipe out a week's worth of work. You might accidentally delete a folder full of files or, worse, overwrite an entire group of files with changes that can't be undone. Whatever the cause of your misfortune, Windows includes tools that offer hope for recovery. If a file is simply lost, try searching for it. For accidental deletions, your first stop should be the Recycle Bin, a Windows institution since 1995. If you don't find what you're looking for in the Recycle Bin, your next recourse is a considerably more powerful recovery tool called File History.
Recovering files and folders with the Recycle Bin
The Recycle Bin provides protection against accidental erasure of files. In most cases, when you delete one or more files or folders, the deleted items go to the Recycle Bin, not into the ether. If you change your mind, you can go to the bin and recover the thrown-out items. Eventually, when the bin fills up, Windows begins emptying it, permanently deleting the files that have been there the longest.
The following kinds of deletions do not go to the Recycle Bin:
- Files stored on removable disks
- Files stored on network drives, even when that volume is on a computer that has its own Recycle Bin
- Files deleted from a command prompt
- Files deleted from compressed (zipped) folders
You can bypass the Recycle Bin yourself, permanently deleting an item, by holding down the Shift key while you delete the item. You might want to do this if you need to get rid of some very large files and you're sure you'll never want those files back. Skipping the Recycle Bin in this case will reclaim some disk space.
You can also turn off the Recycle Bin's services permanently, as we explain in the following section.
Changing Recycle Bin settings
To see and adjust the amount of space currently used by the Recycle Bin for each drive that it protects, right-click the Recycle Bin icon on your desktop and then click Properties. In the Recycle Bin Properties dialog box, you can select a drive and enter a different value in the Custom Size box. Windows ordinarily allocates up to 10 percent of a disk's space for recycling. (When the bin is full, the oldest items give way to the newest.) If you think that amount of space is excessive, enter a lower value.
Note:
If you don't see a Recycle Bin icon on your desktop, it's probably hidden. To make it visible, type desktop icons in the Windows search box. Next, in the search results, click Show Or Hide Common Icons On The Desktop. Then, in the Desktop Icon Settings dialog box, select the Recycle Bin check box and click OK. If you use the Show All Folders option in File Explorer, you'll have access to the Recycle Bin from the bottom of the navigation pane.
If you'd rather do without the Recycle Bin for a particular drive, select the drive in the Recycle Bin Properties dialog box and then select Don't Move Files To The Recycle Bin. Remove Files Immediately When Deleted. This action is equivalent to setting the maximum capacity to 0.
Whether the Recycle Bin is enabled or disabled, Windows normally displays a confirmation prompt when you delete something. If that prompt annoys you, clear the Display Delete Confirmation Dialog check box.
Restoring Files and Folders
When you open the Recycle Bin, Windows displays the names of recently deleted items in an ordinary File Explorer window. In Details view, you can see when each item was deleted and which folder it was deleted from. You can use the column headings to sort the folder-for example, to display the items that have been deleted most recently at the top, with earlier deletions below. Alternatively, you can organize the bin by disk and folder by clicking the Original Location heading. If these methods don't help you find what you're hoping to restore, use the search box.
Note that deleted folders are shown only as folders; you don't see the names of items contained within the folders. If you restore a deleted folder, however, Windows re-creates the folder and its contents.
The Restore commands on the Manage tab (Restore All Items and Restore The Selected Items) puts items back in the folders from which they were deleted. If a folder doesn't currently exist, Windows asks your permission to re-create it. Note that if your Recycle Bin contains hundreds or thousands of deleted files dating back weeks or months, Restore All Items can create chaos. That command is most useful if you recently emptied the Recycle Bin and all of its current contents are visible.
If you want, you can restore a file or folder to a different location. Select the item, click the Home tab, click Move To, and then choose a new location. Or, simplest of all, you can drag the item out of the Recycle Bin and put it where you want it.
Purging the Recycle Bin
A deleted file sitting in your Recycle Bin takes up as much space as it did before it was deleted. If you're deleting files to free up space for new programs and documents, transferring them to the Recycle Bin won't help. You need to remove them permanently. The safest way to do this is to move the items to another storage medium-a different hard disk or a removable disk, for example.
If you're sure you'll never need a particular file again, however, you can delete it in the normal way, and then purge it from the Recycle Bin. Display the Recycle Bin, select the item, and then press Delete.
To empty the Recycle Bin entirely, click Empty Recycle Bin on the Manage tab.
