A deleted file is not gone until something writes over its space. The first hour decides whether recovery works, and the first mistake is installing a recovery tool on the same drive.
Stop writing to that drive, run recovery from a **different disk**, and restore to a **third location**. Every file you copy onto the source drive can overwrite what you are trying to save.
Close every app that writes to it, including sync clients and backup tools. A delete removes the reference to the data, not the data itself; the space is only gone once something new takes it.
Files deleted with Shift, from a network share or from an app's own delete never reach the bin. Everything else does, and it takes ten seconds to check.
If the file was deleted from a folder that File History or a restore point covers, the old copy may still be listed. That is cleaner than raw recovery because the file is intact.
Properties > Previous VersionsInstall a recovery utility onto the USB stick or the second disk, then scan the affected volume read-only. Most tools offer a preview before the restore, which is how you judge the result.
Write the recovered files to a different disk than the one you scanned. The same rule as before: no writes on the source until recovery is finished.
Turn on File History for documents and keep a second copy on another medium. Recovery is a lottery; a backup is not.
The space was reused, or the volume is encrypted. Check whether the drive is encrypted before you scan again.
Part of the data was overwritten. Fragmented, partially recovered files are the normal result of late recovery.
The filesystem, not the files, is damaged. Scan the raw volume and restore the files instead of repairing.
A failing drive retries sectors. Copy an image of the disk first and recover from the image.
Yes. TRIM tells the drive to erase unused blocks, so deleted data often disappears within minutes.
Not necessarily. Test a free tool on a spare drive and compare its preview before paying for anything.
Nothing in the recovery itself changes the source drive. Delete the temporary images and the tool folder once you have what you need.
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