6 steps to recover missing data in Windows

Sadly, there are many reasons why data stored on disk drives in Windows can — and sometimes does — go missing.

As someone who’s used Windows 11 since the day after the first Insider Preview appeared on June 28, 2021, I’ve been through a dozen different data recovery incidents over the past 3-plus years. Some of these have resulted from failing storage media, others from issues with cables or connectors between the media and the PC or its motherboard, and one or two have been self-inflicted arising from mistakes when using disk partitioning or repair utilities. What can I say? I like to experiment, and break things so I can fix them.

In each of these incidents I’ve been able to claw back my missing data, and in most cases you can too. In this story I’ll go over several techniques you can use to try to recover lost files. I’ll use Windows 11 in the examples throughout, but these tips apply to Windows 10 as well.

In this article:

Three main reasons for data loss

When recovery is needed, backup’s the thing

Step 1 to data recovery: Recycle Bin

Step 2: Windows Backup / File History

Step 3: chkdsk

Step 4: Windows File Recovery

Step 5: Partition/data recovery

If file recovery succeeds, follow up with a disk health check

Step 6: Call in the professionals

As with my tutorials for repairing Microsoft Office and repairing Windows itself, the idea is to perform these steps in order. If the first step doesn’t work, move on to the next, and so forth. With luck, you’ll recover your missing data early in the sequence.

But first, let’s take a look at the main culprits when it comes to Windows data going MIA.

Three main reasons for data loss

In most cases, three primary causes stand behind situations that call for data recovery. These are:

1. File or file structure damage or corruption. Basically, files are just long sequences of bits (1s and 0s) chained together through a master file table (or its equivalent) on the storage media. For various reasons, those patterns can become damaged or disrupted. Consequently, they may go missing or become unreadable. In this case, your repair efforts attempt to restore those bits to their original form and order.

2. Partition or disk structure changes or damage. In Windows, storage devices use specific disk layouts to create logical volumes (which usually have names and associated drive letters) wherein file systems reside. Each volume (and certain other disk structures related to boot-up and recovery on Windows system/boot disks) has at least one associated on-disk partition. The drive maintains one or more copies of a partition table to keep track of disk extents, called sectors, where partitions (volumes and other special disk regions) reside.

When errors or unwanted changes affect a partition table, it must be repaired before the files and folders in any of the volumes it describes may be accessed. In this case, the repair process attempts to restore the partition table’s original structure and contents.

3. Storage hardware problems. For spinning disks, this might involve damage to a disk platter’s read/write heads or one of its recording surfaces, and usually manifests as loss of drive sectors. In severe cases, a storage device may fail completely so that its contents become completely unreadable. For SSDs, something similar can happen when the drive’s controller suffers from hardware errors, or when the flash memory locations under its control become damaged or unreadable.

For both kinds of drives, failure is often a progressive cascade. That is, it starts slowly, with the failure of one or two sectors or memory locations, and gets progressively worse over time. Eventually the device fails completely. At that point, end-user recovery is impossible, and one must turn to a data recovery company for expensive professional recovery services.

That’s why it’s best to act upon the first sign(s) of disk trouble while there’s still time to head problems off at the pass. In this case, repair means attempting to capture valid data from good sectors or locations before they have a chance to go bad.

When recovery is needed, backup’s the thing

Long before you encounter data loss issues, it’s worth employing one or both of Windows’ built-in file backup tools. File History takes snapshots of files stored in certain main folders in Windows 10 and 11. Windows Backup saves your files, apps, settings, and credentials to OneDrive in the cloud. These set ‘em and forget ‘em tools require little or no effort to use once set up; see my tutorials on File History and Windows Backup for details.

In my opinion, though, nothing beats access to a fresh, current system backup of a drive from which items may be missing or lost. For example, I keep project work on two separate SATA SSDs (F: and X:) and back them up every morning, along with the all-important C: boot/system drive where Windows itself lives. Thus, I’m reasonably sure that no matter what happens to one or more of those drives, I won’t lose more than a day’s work or data, worst case.

Before attempting any kind of file or data recovery on Windows 11, the first thing you should do (let’s call it Step 0) is back up the problem drive on which missing or inaccessible files or data once resided. This means you can always get back to where you started, should your own data recovery efforts cause further problems. You will then be able to turn the media over to a data recovery company that has tools and capabilities that ordinary users like you, dear reader, and I do not have at our disposal.

That’s the worst-case scenario, though. There are several steps you can take first to try to recover your lost files yourself. Let’s walk through those first, shall we?

Step 1 to data recovery: Recycle Bin

A typical situation that calls for data recovery is one where a user or some program has deleted a file from a Windows volume, intentionally or perhaps accidentally. Afterward, the user wishes to regain access to that file.

It seems obvious, but checking Recycle Bin to see if the missing file is present can often save a lot of unnecessary hassle when recovering lost items. Double-click the Recycle Bin icon on the desktop, then browse or use the search box to see if the missing file is there. If it turns up, a right-click on the item, then selecting Restore is all that’s needed to put the file back where it came from (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Right-click any item in Recycle Bin, then click Restore. That’s all it takes to recover files from the Recycle Bin.
Ed Tittel / Foundry

If the file you seek is not available in the Recycle Bin, other actions may help.

Step 2: File History / Windows Backup

This step comes with some ifs attached. The first if is “Is File History (or Windows Backup) turned on?” The second if is “Does File History (or Windows Backup) include this file?” If so, the third if is “Are the damaged or missing files available through File History (or Windows Backup)?”

To briefly explain: both File History and Windows Backup are turned off by default and must be enabled. Even then, these utilities only back up files stored in specific folders — namely, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Videos, and Music (a.k.a. “Library folders”) from the logged-in user’s file hierarchy. (See my File History and Windows Backup tutorials for details on setting them up, including a way to include additional folders in File History backups.)

If you have both tools enabled, consider what kind of restore operation you need. Windows Backup offers basically an “all-or-nothing” restore capability. If you’re simply looking to restore one or a small number of files and/or folders, it’s not the right tool for the job. Why? Because Restore in Windows Backup works through the Windows Installer — that is, when you start the Windows install process and log in with your Microsoft Account (MSA), it will offer to restore the PCs for which it has backups associated with that account through OneDrive. This is generally best reserved for situations where a full system restore or rebuild is called for. It’s not a good fit for restoring some smaller number of files or folders.

If you take this route, please understand you’ll have to wait through a clean Windows 10 or 11 install, after which Windows Backup will start the process of bringing your apps, files and folders, settings and preferences back (but there will still be more work for you, as explained in my Windows Backup tutorial — see the section “WB comes with a catch…”).

For a one-off file or just a handful of items, use File History instead.  Click Start > Settings, then type file history into the Settings search box. From the options that appear, select Restore your files with File History.

You’ll see a File Explorer-like view of your backed-up folders. Click any folder to drill down to the item you want. If you navigate into the Documents folder, for example, you’ll see its contents show up. By highlighting one or more files, you select them for a “copy back” operation. Then, when you click the green arrow at bottom center (see Figure 2), it will restore the files you’ve selected to their original location.

Figure 2: Select an item and click the green “back-circle” arrow to restore it.
Ed Tittel / Foundry

For in-depth details about File History, including its limitations, setup minutae, and the best way to configure it, see “How to use File History in Windows 10 and 11.”

If a file or folder is not available for restoration through File History or Windows Backup, more robust recovery is needed. That means it’s time to move on to the third step.

Step 3: chkdsk

If the affected drive remains readable and visible in Windows — that is, the drive letter still appears in File Explorer and some (or most) of its files and folders remain visible therein — the next step to recovery is to use the command line check disk utility, a.k.a. chkdsk.exe. You’ll need to run it at an administrative command prompt or in an administrative PowerShell session. (Type either cmd or powershell in the Windows search box, right-click Command Prompt or Windows PowerShell in the list of results, select Run as administrator, and enter the password if prompted.)

You can use either of two key parameters to effect disk repairs, as outlined on the MS Docs Windows Commands reference for chkdsk):

/f: Fixes errors on the disk. The disk must be locked. If chkdsk cannot lock the drive, a message appears that asks you if you want to check the drive the next time you start the computer.

/r: Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information. The disk must be locked. /r includes the functionality of /f, with the additional analysis of physical disk errors.

The only way to repair the Windows boot/system disk (usually drive letter C:) is to elect the option to repair after the next restart, followed by a restart of the affected PC.

For minor disk corruption or damage, this step is often as far as you’ll need to go. If it works, count yourself lucky — and make another backup right away!

Step 4: Windows File Recovery

Microsoft offers a good, basic file recovery utility called Windows File Recovery (winfr.exe) for Windows 10 version 2004 and up and all versions of Windows 11. It’s available in the Microsoft Store.

This utility launches in an administrative command prompt session and runs at the command line. I tried the command to recover download files, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: winfr.exe is added to the path, and online examples are entirely worth trying out, as shown for downloads here.
Ed Tittel / Foundry

There is a learning curve involved in using this tool, but the user manual is available online and very much worth reading and exploring for those willing to tackle file and folder recovery at the command line. If you know what’s missing and where it resided, you can use it to recover files quickly and easily using specific filters — the more specific, the better, as I learned when recovering my old download files.

The winfr tool also supports what’s called “extensive mode,” which offers more comprehensive and far-reaching repair capabilities. Regular mode is turned on by default; you must use the /extensive parameter to access extensive mode’s capabilities. It’s good at handling non-NTFS file sytems (e.g., FAT and exFAT), and can find more files deleted longer ago. Extensive mode can also attempt repairs after formatting a disk — which takes us into territory for the next topic, partition repairs — and it is better able to cope with disk corruption than regular mode.

Those who prefer to undelete files using a graphical interface instead of working at the command line should try the free but good Piriform tool Recuva.

Step 5: Partition/data recovery

There are plenty of good third-party data recovery tools available for Windows 11. That said, those that can recover entire drives — especially big ones — or that offer partition and formatting recovery usually cost money.

For example, upgrading from the free version of Recuva to the Professional version means gaining more advanced file recovery, including partition recovery, recovery from damaged or reformatted disks, and more extensive recovery for long-deleted files and folders. It costs US$25 for a one-year subscription. Similarly, MiniTool Partition Wizard, which offers excellent partition handling and modest partition recovery in its free version, but adds extensive file, folder, and partition recovery capabilities to its Pro version (US$59 yearly).

Ditto for Stellar Data Recovery, which comes in a variety of versions that range from Standard (US$60 yearly) to Toolkit (US$299 yearly/$599 lifetime). Only those who need to recover BitLocker-encrypted or multi-OS drives need those higher-end versions. In my testing, the Toolkit version found 2.4TB of recoverable files on a 1.84TB drive, which strikes me as both impressive and entirely too comprehensive. You can see that in the lower left corner of Figure 4.

Figure 4: Remarkably, Stellar Data Recovery found 2.4TB of recoverable files on a 1.86TB drive.
Ed Tittel / Foundry

Stellar uses a simple File Explorer-like UI through which you can navigate to select files or folders to restore from its collection of recoverable items. It’s intuitive and easy to use, and quite fast, considering what it does (took less than 10 minutes to offer a huge list of recoverable files and folders, as shown).

Once partition or file recovery is effected, you can then tackle file and folder recovery from newly restored partitions (if needed), or from the list of recoverable items your tool offers up. In cases where accidental reformatting or partitioning mistakes have been self-inflicted — I’ve done this to myself on at least two occasions when I targeted the wrong drive — successfully restoring the old partitioning scheme usually brings all the old files and folders back, too.

If file recovery succeeds, follow up with a disk health check

Something had to cause whatever issues led you down the recovery road. If you’ve managed to recover data through chkdsk, Windows File Recovery, or another data recovery tool, it’s a good idea to give the problem disk a thorough checkup after that’s done.

Hard drive and SSD makers often offer such tools as downloads for the drives they sell, and there are plenty of free and for-a-fee tools available for disk health checks. I’m partial to the open-source CrystalDiskInfo because it provides a good overview of a disk’s SMART data (self-monitoring, analysis and reporting technology, which includes error counts that often signal impending disk failures).

Other tools such as HD Tune Pro ($35, occasionally available for free, plus free trial) and Hard Disk Sentinel (free trial available, $20 for the standard version, $30 for the pro version) offer more detailed disk diagnosis and surface/media scans to provide better information on disk health and condition. The former took 30 minutes to scan my 3-year-old Western Digital SN810 SSD (nominal 2TB; actual 1.86TB) before giving 80% of it a clean bill of health despite heavy usage, as shown in Figure 5. (The free trial won’t scan the full disk as an inducement to buy the Pro version.)

Figure 5: The HD Tune trial version error scan covers only 80% of any disk to persuade users to buy a Pro copy.
Ed Tittel / Foundry

If a disk shows questionable health or more than 10% of its sectors are damaged, it’s time to replace it. Make a backup while you still can, order a new device, and you’ll be able to restore the backup when the replacement arrives.

Step 6: Call in the professionals

If steps 1 through 5 fail, you’ll need to seek outside help. Here’s Software Testing Help’s list of the top 10+ data recovery services for those who must travel this road.

Hopefully, you’ll never need to send a drive to a professional data recovery service. If you do, be prepared to pay handsomely for their work. Charges of $300 and up are typical. (Bigger drives cost more, as you might expect.) And it can take weeks or months to get through their service queues.

Some companies will let you send them a replacement drive on which to restore what they find. Others will insist on selling you such a drive, sometimes at above-market prices. But sometimes, there is no alternative, and you’ll pay what you must to get precious or irreplaceable files and data back.

Be sure to work out as much of the cost picture as you can before sending a drive off for recovery. You don’t want the bill, however big it turns out to be, to come as a surprise. In my 30-plus years of working with personal computers, I’ve never had to send a drive off for professional recovery. Even so, it’s good to know such services exist should one ever need them.

Personally, I learned the value of backups in 1989, when a 300MB SCSI drive attached to a Macintosh cratered. I lost a book manuscript as a result. I’ve never been caught unprotected again, nor should you be. Happy computing!

This article was originally published in June 2021 and updated in April 2025.