Recovering Files After Formatting or Deleting: What’s the Difference?
Tags: beginners, testing, test, tutorial
Published: 2022-03-29 10:07:34

Read this article about peculiarities of data recovery after formatting a disk or merely deleting files, and about the methods you can apply to bring the information back.

## Different Ways to Delete Files

Generally, there are two main ways to delete a file:

* ordinary deleting (soft delete);
* permanent deleting (hard delete).
All versions of the Windows operating system feature Windows Recycle Bin, a protected location for deleted files, where they end up after you delete them and are stored for some time (all of that is possible if you configure its settings in a corresponding way). By default, this protected storage will keep all files deleted from the hard disk of your computer until a certain system condition is satisfied, or until a user performs certain actions.

Find the Recycle Bin icon on the desktop and right-click on it. From the list of available actions, select Properties. In the window that opens, find the tab General and the section Settings for selected location: the default option is Custom size: Maximum size (MB): where you can set the size of the Windows Recycle Bin reserved for storing deleted files.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6teq1y6valnhvcibqlvp.png)

For ordinary deleting, there are two easy ways: press Delete on the keyboard, or right-click on a file (several previously selected files) and select Delete from the context menu.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/x40491hb176h9yif8piy.png)

When going for hard delete, you can use a shortcut involving the Shift key (for example, Shift + Delete). This key combination removes a file or a group of files immediately, without the interim stage of placing them into the Recycle Bin.

You can also remove files permanently after you have changed some settings for the Windows Recycle Bin. Open the properties window for Windows Recycle Bin just as you did it before and check the option Don’t move files to the Recycle Bin. Remove files immediately when deleted, and then click Apply and ОК for the changes to take effect.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/9ke9w3ay6ejtcbi18p8b.png)

Additionally, files deleted in an ordinary way and placed into the Windows Recycle Bin, will be deleted permanently when the Windows Recycle Bin runs out of the size assigned to it and is filled with previously deleted files. In this case, when a new file is deleted, the Windows Recycle Bin will remove permanently the oldest files to make room for the recently deleted data.

Also, when the Windows Recycle Bin is emptied by the user, all files stored there will be deleted for good. This process starts when you select Empty Recycle Bin from the context menu as you right-click on the Windows Recycle Bin desktop shortcut.

It should be noted that when deleting files from USB flash drives and memory cards, all files will be removed immediately without Windows Recycle Bin, regardless of what way of deleting you may choose.

You can learn more about recovering user data lost from USB drives by watching a video tutorial How to Recover Deleted Files from a USB Drive after Formatting the Drive or a Virus Attack.

Sometimes, files can be deleted dues to some external factors such as system failures, read or write errors, file system damage, malware effects and so on. yet almost in all cases you can still recover the removed files with the help of professional data recovery tools – which we will cover in the final part of this article.

To secure your computer and all of its data from harmful effects of viruses, make sure you know how to clean your system from all kinds of malware: a video guide on our channel should be most helpful – 100% Guaranteed Removal of Any Virus: Trojan, Rootkit, Ransomware, Spyware.

## Recovering Deleted Files with Windows Recycle Bin
If you didn’t change the default settings of the Windows Recycle Bin you can recover any deleted files easily from there.

Open the Recycle Bin – for example, by double-clicking on the Windows Recycle Bin shortcut or by right-clicking on the shortcut and selecting Open from the menu.

You will see several options for file recovery. Select a file or a group of files to be recovered, and right-click to open a menu: choose Restore. The selected files will immediately be returned to their previous location where they were stored right before being deleted.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/3o6gwlxci40xickw5d19.png)

Otherwise, use the button on the panel above to select either selected elements or all of the files currently stored in the Windows Recycle Bin.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/tazxjagw82ygyi16f9n0.png)
## Deleting Files by Formatting the disk
Before you actually begin using a hard disk, it is recommended to configure it properly. In other words, you need to create a certain structure to allow the operating system use all of the disk space to write and process data. This process is known as formatting.

There are two kinds of formatting, low-level and high-level. In one of the previous articles we already described the process of low-level formatting performed once when a hard disk is manufactured.

The high-level formatting is the process of marking the hard disk space by creating a file allocation table – a logical structure in charge of processing and storing data properly.

Within a Windows operating system, we can use high-level formatting to break the hard disk into logical volumes (partitions) or clean the disk space to update the file allocation table and prepare the disk for new entries.

When you start the formatting process, the old file allocation table is replaced by a new one. After such an operation, all information on the data stored in such disk is erased, and the operating system will see such disk as empty and good for writing new entries. However, all the data that existed in such disk is still there and available for recovery until it is overwritten with new data.

Visit our YouTube channel for a detailed video guide on recovering data after working with partitions: «How to Recover Data After Formatting, Deleting or Creating Partitions».

YouTube: {% youtube WhyMcH4iWpc %}

## Peculiarities of Deleting Data from SSDs
Solid-state drives, also known as SSDs, require special attention, as their process of deleting a file follows a different scenario.

An SSD is a storage device based on NAND flash memory with a separate controller chip. Such drives have no moving parts, which makes them absolutely noiseless and extremely durable. In addition, they have considerably higher read/write speeds and can perform significantly more input and output operations per second than any conventional hard disk.

All these benefits come from using the hardware command known as TRIM. The operating system tells the solid-state drive which sectors in the flash memory cells can be cleaned, so the TRIM command does it making more room for new entries. This way, a file is removed immediately after being deleted – which almost excludes its subsequent recovery. Using TRIM allows an SSD to reduce accumulation of non-used data (because storing it affects the disk’s overall performance), but doesn’t give users a single chance to recover the deleted data.

## Recovering Files After Formatting or Deleting
There are different ways to recover files after they were deleted, or a logical volume (or an entire hard disk) was formatted. The common factor for both cases is that files can be recovered and with a good chance of success. The difference is, though, that complete recovery will be more likely after files being deleted than after a disk being formatted. It happens so because after formatting all sectors of the hard disk are considered free and available for writing, so they can be overwritten with new data as you continue using the hard disk. This way, the chances for being overwritten are immense compared to the case of a file being deleted.

Logically, you should try to use the formatted disk as little as possible if you are still interested in recovering the deleted data. Do not do anything that involves much hard disk activity like saving new files, downloading large amounts of information and so on to reduce the risk of your old data being overwritten.

On the contrary, you should hurry up with data recovery – and a few tips on that matter are right below.

## Recovering Files with Windows Integrated Tools
For both cases – either files removed permanently, or files lost after formatting the hard disk – there are ways to restore the lost data (provided you have enabled certain settings in your operating system) with the help of the integrated system tools. You can use any of the methods you like to have your files back. An important condition for using the suggested file recovery methods is to enable the corresponding settings in your operating system so that it will be possible to create data archives to work with. If these settings were disabled at the time of deleting files or formatting the disk, there is no way they could help you out. It is also important not to keep the archives on the same disk that has been formatted. Otherwise, you should scroll down to the final part of the article and recover data after deleting or formatting with specialized professional software.