kate.pratt KA

Any chance of recovering files I shift-deleted on Windows 10?

Used shift+delete on a folder of work spreadsheets, so they skipped the recycle bin completely. It's an older laptop with a normal hard drive, not an SSD, and I've barely touched it since it happened. Is it worth trying a recovery tool, and is there anything I should avoid doing in the meantime?
recover deleted files
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david_beta Oct 29, 2026
kate.pratt
Before any recovery software, right-click the folder they were in and look at Restore previous versions. If File History or system protection was ever on, there might be a copy from before you deleted them. Ten seconds to check.
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dan_gadget Oct 08, 2026
kate.pratt
Depends mostly on the drive. On an old spinning hard drive there's a decent chance, as long as you stop writing to it. On an SSD, honestly, it's slim, because TRIM clears deleted blocks fairly soon after. Either way: stop using that drive as much as you can, don't install recovery software onto it, and recover to a different drive. Microsoft has a free command-line tool called Windows File Recovery in the Store that's worth a go. Before all that, check whether the folder was synced to OneDrive. The OneDrive recycle bin online keeps deleted files even when shift-delete skipped the local one.
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