How to Recover Deleted Files with DiskGenius

Do this before anything else

1. Stop using the drive that held the files. No saving, no installing, no downloading to it.
2. If it is the drive Windows boots from, shut the computer down and attach the disk to another machine, or work from bootable media.
3. Check the Recycle Bin first. It sounds obvious and it resolves a surprising share of cases in ten seconds.
4. Install the recovery software on a different drive than the one you need to read.

Every write to the affected volume is a chance to overwrite exactly the file you want. Speed here matters more than technique.

Step 1 — Select the right partition

Launch the program with administrator rights and let the disk list populate. Identify the disk by capacity and model, then select the partition the files lived on rather than the whole disk. A targeted scan of one volume is faster and produces results that keep folder names.

Step 2 — Run the deleted file scan

Start with the recovery option aimed at deleted files. This reads the existing file system and reconstructs the records that were unlinked, so results usually arrive with original names and paths intact. On a data partition it often completes in minutes.

Leave the scan alone while it runs. Browsing the same drive in Explorer at the same time is exactly the kind of write activity you were trying to avoid.

Step 3 — Find your files in the results

Result lists get large quickly. Three ways to cut them down:

• Filter by file type when you know you are after photos, documents or video.
• Search by file name or extension if you remember either.
• Follow the folder tree, which mirrors the original structure when the file system records survived.

Step 4 — Preview before you commit

Select a few candidates and preview them. An image that renders and a document that opens are proof the content is intact. Blank or garbled previews mean the blocks were already reused, and no amount of extra scanning will bring them back — better to learn that now than after a long recovery run.

Step 5 — Recover to a different disk

Choose a destination on another physical drive — an external disk is ideal. Writing recovered files onto the source volume can overwrite the files still waiting to be recovered, which is the single most common self-inflicted failure in this whole process.

When the recovery finishes, open a sample of the files. Verification is part of the job, not an optional extra.

If the quick scan found nothing

• Run a full, deeper scan. It looks for file signatures across the whole volume and finds content whose file system records are gone. Expect generic names and no folder structure.
• If an entire volume is missing rather than individual files, switch to lost partition recovery.
• If the drive is an SSD, accept that TRIM may already have cleared the blocks. It is not a tool failure.
• If the drive makes noise or scans keep stalling, stop and read our disk health check guide before trying again.

Why timing beats technique

Two people delete the same folder. One disconnects the drive within a minute; the other keeps working, installs a recovery tool onto the same volume and starts a browser download. The first recovers everything, the second recovers fragments. Nothing about the software differed — only the number of writes that landed on the drive in between.

On a mechanical hard drive that grace period can stretch for weeks if the volume is quiet. On an SSD with TRIM active it can close in minutes, because the controller clears blocks the file system has released. This is why the first instruction in every honest recovery guide is about stopping, not about scanning.

Recovering from removable media

USB sticks and memory cards behave slightly differently. They are usually formatted FAT32 or exFAT, they rarely support TRIM, and their controllers are simpler — which generally works in your favour for recovery. What hurts instead is physical mistreatment: a card pulled out during a write leaves an inconsistent file system, and a stick that has been reformatted by a camera or phone may have had a fresh table written across the old one.

• Use a card reader rather than the device itself where possible — a camera or phone may write metadata as soon as it mounts the card.
• Do not accept an operating system's offer to repair the volume before you have scanned it.
• If the media is not detected at all, the fault may be the reader or the connector rather than the storage. Try another port and another reader before assuming the worst.

Verifying and organising what you got back

A recovery is finished when the files open, not when the progress bar does. Spot-check across types: open several photos at full size, page to the end of a long document, play a video past the first few seconds. Signature-recovered files land with generic names, so sorting by extension and size is the fastest route to identifying the ones you actually wanted.

Once you have verified the important material, copy it to a second location before you touch the source drive again. Then decide what the original disk is for — reformatting it is reasonable if it is healthy, and retiring it is reasonable if the recovery was caused by hardware trouble.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can files deleted months ago still be recovered?

On a lightly used mechanical drive, sometimes yes. On a busy system drive or an SSD, much less likely, because the space has probably been reused.

Why are some recovered files corrupted?

Part of the content was overwritten before recovery. Previewing first tells you which files are worth recovering.

Can I recover files deleted with Shift+Delete?

Yes — bypassing the Recycle Bin removes the entry but does not erase the data, so a scan can still find it.