Microsoft is releasing its own Windows File Recovery tool, designed to retrieve files you’ve mistakenly deleted. Windows File Recovery is a command line app that will recover a variety of files and documents from local hard drives, USB drives, and even SD cards from cameras. Recovery of files on cloud storage or network file shares is not supported, though.
Like any file recovery tool, you’ll need to use it as soon as possible on deleted files to ensure they haven’t been overwritten. You’ll be able to use Microsoft’s new tool to recover MP3 files, MP4 videos, PDF documents, JPEG images, and typical Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.
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Microsoft’s file recovery tool has a default mode that’s designed primarily for NTFS file systems. It will recover files from a corrupted disk or after you’ve formatted a disk. A second signature mode will likely be the more popular option, allowing users to recover specific file types across FAT, exFAT, and ReFS file systems. This signature mode may also take longer to retrieve files.
Windows File Recovery will be a useful tool for anyone who has accidentally deleted an important document, or wiped a drive clean by mistake. Microsoft already provides a Previous Versions feature in Windows 10 that lets you recovery documents you may have deleted, but you have to specifically enable this using a File History feature that’s disabled by default.
