Microsoft releases its own Windows File Recovery tool

Microsoft has released its own Windows File Recovery tool, designed to retrieve files you’ve mistakenly deleted. File Photo: IANS

Microsoft has released its own Windows File Recovery tool, designed to retrieve files you’ve mistakenly deleted. File Photo: IANS

Published Jul 1, 2020

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Have you ever accidentally deleted an important file or wiped clean your hard drive? Microsoft has released its own Windows File Recovery tool, designed to retrieve files you’ve mistakenly deleted.

The Windows File Recovery is a command-line application that recovers a range of files and documents from local hard drives, USB drives and even SD cards from cameras. Files on cloud storage or network file shares are not supported on the Windows File Recovery.

Windows File Recovery app is free to download from the Windows Store and is only compatible with Windows 10 devices.

Just like any file recovery tool, it needs to be used as soon as possible on deleted files to ensure they have not been overwritten. The new Microsoft Recovery tool will help to recover MP3 files, MP4 videos, PDF documents, JPEG images, and Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents

Microsoft’s File Recovery tool has three modes that can be used to recover files and those are Default mode, Segment mode, and Signature mode.

The Default mode is designed especially for the NTFS file system. It recovers files from corrupted disk or formatted disks.

The Segment mode needs to locate data. This mode is the summary of file information that the NTFS stores in the MFT. Information such as name, date, size, type, and the cluster/allocation unit index of certain files.

The Signature mode will likely be the more popular option, it allows users, to recover specific file types across FAT, exFAT, and ReFS file systems. However, this mode may also take longer to retrieve files.

Windows File Recovery will be a useful tool for anyone who has been struggling to recover permanently deleted files. 

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