Please give more details of what you are trying to recover, from what kind of drive, and why you are trying to recover the files, *Deleted, crashed, reformatted, something else).
The tell us how you have tried using Recuva up to now, eg. have you been using the Wizard or the Advanced Options?
I’m trying to recover everything from my Desktop folder, they have all been deleted from the recycle bin as I did Shift+Delete by accident whilst dragging them to the recycle bin. I’ve tried deep scanning and regular scanning, and I’m still not getting everything back.
Hello…
I’m still confused on what to do.
so their likely not of your concern for the files you want to recover
[quote] I did Shift+Delete by accident whilst dragging them to the recycle bin.
[/quote]
That shift+delete is your issue.
It’s a “Secure Delete”/“Permanently Delete” method that bypasses the recycle bin and in some cases can be set to overwrite where the file was on the drive - so that nobody can recover it later using recovery software.
Even if it hasn’t overwritten the files it’s likely that just using the computer will have overwritten where they used to be.
Unfortunately files that have been overwritten cannot be recovered.
PS. You also failed to say what kind of drive it is.
If it’s a SSD then Windows will have issued a TRIM comnand when shift-deleting the files, and so the SSD controller will then do a ‘Garbage Collect’ making recovery virtually impossible.
With SSDs it is more important than ever that you make regular backups so that if something goes wrong you have a backup of your files (or your full system) and don’t need to try and recover things.
Does that mean it’s too late to try anything? And if so, is there a way to prevent this in the future (other than the regular backups)?
I would say that yes, because you used shift+delete, because you have kept using that computer/drive, and because Recuva cannot now find the deleted files, then I would say that the files are almost certainly gone.
(You may have had a window of oportunity to get them back if your drive is a HDD and you quickly turn off the computer and remove that drive while you work on it as an external drive. If it;s an SSD though even that short window may not be possible).
That’s basicly the whole point of shift-delete, to lessen the chances that a deleted file can be recovered at some future time.
Yes, don’t use shift+delete all the time, save it for ‘special’ use on files that you don’t want there to be a chance that they could later be recovered.
If you have got into the habit of always using shift+delete then you may want to get out of that habit.
Or just slow down a bit and think about what you are doing.
Windows does know that people can make mistakes, and can do things without thinking.
That’s why if/when you use shift+delete Windows makes you slow down, by asking for comfirmation; to give you a chance to think if you really want to do that:
PS. I notice that yet again you haven’t answered what type of drive it is, HDD or SSD
But the reply is the same anyway.
If you want a second opinion then watch this, it basically repeats what I’ve said in the threads here.
He uses a different recovery software here and not Recuva, but the comments are still valid whatever recovery software you use: