One of the most sought features in the tech world is the ability to recover previously deleted items from your computer. For years, people have been in situations where they destroyed certain documents or media, did not have a backup, and then needed those erased items a few days or months later. Until today, there had been no definitive remedy to this challenge. Microsoft has announced its own version of File Recovery Software, which, according to the corporation, will help you recover recently deleted files in a matter of seconds. There are several restrictions that govern the retrieval range, but it’s a decent start.
The Windows File Recovery utility is a command-line application that helps you to recover content that you may have accidentally deleted. File recovery is possible on local hard discs, USB devices, and even camera SD cards. Cloud file recovery is not currently available, so once it’s gone from the cloud, there’s no way to get it back.
We noted previously that there are some restrictions to using the Windows File Recovery App, and one of them is that you can only use it to recover files that have recently been deleted. You will be unable to retrieve the files once they have been overwritten. Microsoft has encouraged users to utilize the program immediately after accidentally deleting content in order for the procedure to be successful.
When it comes to the kind of data you can recover, Microsoft’s new tool will allow you to recover MP3 files, MP4 videos, PDF documents, JPEG photos, and standard Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.
Currently, the Windows File Recovery tool comes with one default mode that helps you recover files from NTFS file systems. It can recover content from either a corrupted disk or even a completely formatted one.
Users have requested a second mode that caters to the more popular file systems like FAT, exFAT, and ReFS, and hopefully, we will see that feature come in as well in future iterations.
Let us take a look at how you can use the Windows File Recovery tool on your Windows 11 PC.
Right Click on the Windows File Recovery tool and click on the ‘Run as Administrator option.
Type ‘winfr’ in the command prompt window to see all the available file recovery options.
You can now recover the desired files from the corresponding drives and locations. The syntax is as follows
winfr sourcedrive: destinationdrive: [\switch]
Overall, the Windows File Recovery tool is a great app that lets you recover deleted files and saves you the time of creating the document and media content once again.
You can download the Windows File Recovery Tool from the Microsoft Store.